Did an online mindfulness course help people cope with lockdown?
People who took an online mindfulness course during the first COVID-19 lockdown reported less stress and anxiety and better emotion regulation than people who did not, and the gains lasted at least a month.
Source
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Increases Mental Wellbeing and Emotion Regulation During the First Wave of the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Synchronous Online Intervention Study
Study at a glance
- Design
- Other — Non-randomised controlled trial: people who enrolled in an online MBSR course versus people who were interested but did not enrol; self-report at pre, post and 1-month follow-up, intention-to-treat mixed models plus growth-curve and mediation analyses
- N
- N=92 · 92 participants in total according to the Results (the Methods also describe 46 who agreed to serve as controls); 71 completed all three measurements (33 MBSR, 38 control)
- Population
- Israeli adults from the general population who expressed interest in a discounted online MBSR course during the first COVID-19 wave; mostly female, secular and university-educated
- Outcome
- Mindfulness (manipulation check), perceived stress, state anxiety, difficulties in emotion regulation and intolerance of uncertainty
Structured fields used in claim comparison tables when every cited study has a complete layer.
What they did
The researchers followed people who had shown interest in a live, Zoom-based Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course in spring 2020. Those who actually enrolled formed the intervention group, and those who decided not to enrol (or found the course full) served as controls, so groups were not randomised. The 8-week course had weekly 2.5-hour group sessions, 30 minutes of daily home practice and a shortened silent retreat. Everyone completed questionnaires on mindfulness, stress, anxiety, emotion regulation and intolerance of uncertainty before the course, right after it, and 1 month later.
What they found
Compared with controls, the MBSR group showed larger increases in self-reported mindfulness and larger decreases in perceived stress, state anxiety and difficulties regulating emotions; the control group did not change significantly on these measures. The improvements were still present at the 1-month follow-up, even though pandemic restrictions had tightened by then. Intolerance of uncertainty did not change in either group. A mediation analysis suggested that the improvement in emotion regulation partly accounted for the drop in a combined stress-and-anxiety score.
The limits
What it doesn't show
Because people chose whether to join the course, the groups may differ in motivation, personality or life circumstances; indeed, the enrolled group started with lower mindfulness and more emotion-regulation difficulties. There was no active control, so benefits could come from the group, the teachers or simply doing something structured, rather than mindfulness itself. All outcomes were self-report questionnaires, follow-up was only 1 month, and the reported sample sizes are not fully consistent across sections. The mediation analysis uses change scores from an observational comparison, so it cannot prove that emotion regulation causes the improvement.
Key terms
- Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR)
- A standardised 8-week group programme of meditation, body scan and gentle yoga that trains non-judgemental attention to present-moment experience.
- Non-randomised controlled trial
- A study that compares a treated group with an untreated group, but where people end up in groups by their own choice rather than by chance, so pre-existing differences can bias results.
- Emotion regulation
- The processes people use to influence which emotions they have, when they have them and how they experience or express them; here measured as self-reported difficulties in doing so.
- Intolerance of uncertainty
- A tendency to find uncertain or unpredictable situations upsetting and hard to live with.
- Mediation analysis
- A statistical test of whether the effect of one variable on an outcome runs partly through a third, intermediate variable.
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Quiz yourself
How did participants end up in the MBSR group rather than the control group?
Common questions
Why can't we be sure the mindfulness course caused the improvements?
People chose to enrol, so enrolled and non-enrolled participants could differ in ways that also affect stress, such as readiness to change. Without random assignment and an active comparison course, other explanations cannot be ruled out.
What was the manipulation check?
Self-reported mindfulness. If the course worked as intended it should raise mindfulness, and it did rise in the course group but not in controls.
Why is it interesting that intolerance of uncertainty did not change?
Uncertainty was a defining feature of the pandemic, yet the course did not shift it. The authors suggest the questionnaire may not capture pandemic-style uncertainty, or that a short course is not enough to change it.
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