Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) to Reduce Anxiety, Improve Sense of Coherence, Optimism and General Health Among Students

Anxiety is an inherent facet of human existence. Students experience intense anxiety. The current study has been undertaken keeping in mind the unwarranted anxiety and the health complaints made by many children and adolescents of today. The objective of the study was to determine whether Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction would be effective in reducing anxiety, improving sense of coherence, optimism and health among students. Apilot study was carried out on a sample of 30 students aged between 13to 17 years from a school in Puducherry just before the main survey to obtain the reliability of the tools to be used for the study. A brief MBSR (2 week) was also conducted only as a part of the pilot study to check for the feasibility of the administration of the intervention. The main study was then initiated after confirming for the appropriateness and the validity of the questionnaires. Data was collected from 300 students from various schools in Puducherry. The tools used were Depression and Anxiety Scale by Newcomer, General Health Questionnaire by Goldberg, Optimism scale by Scheier and Carver and Sense of Coherence scale by Antonovsky. Participants for the intervention study were selected from a school in which the researcher would provide the intervention. Those participants who had poor health were mainly included in the second phase of the study. Participants who had poor health shown by their scores were called and briefed about the study and those participants who were willing to be a part of the intervention study were included. Fifty students who were willing to participate were chosen and the consent to participate in the study was obtained. These 50 participants were then divided into 2 groups randomly and then were assigned randomly to experimental and control groups. After the 8 week sessions of MBSR, the participants of the experimental group and the control group were assembled and asked to fill in the questionnaires. Statistical tests employed for the analysis of the data were Pearson's Correlation, Independent and Paired Samples t test and Multivariate Analysis of Variance. The results revealed that there exists a significant relationship between anxiety, sense of coherence, optimism and health. There is a significant difference in anxiety between the boys and girls with girls experiencing more anxiety than boys. A significant decrease in anxiety and an improvement in health, optimism and sense of coherence was seen in the participants of the experimental group. A significant increase in the sense of coherence was seen in the participants of the control group in the posttest scores. The MANOVAresults clearly showed that mindfulness has been effective in reducing anxiety and improving sense of coherence, optimism and health among students. To eliminate the effects of a covariate a Multivariate Covariance of Analysis was performed on the data and it was found that removing the effects of the pretest scores showed better scores on the study variables. The effect sizes were found to be health = .281; sense of coherence= .311; optimism= .327 ; anxiety= .232. The results also indicate that there has been no significant changes in the follow-up scores of the experimental group when tested on the variables after a fortnight. The delimitation of the study was that it was restricted to schools in Puducherry. The researcher felt that as it was the developing years, there was no obvious way to have controlled for the changes in sense of coherence which would probably be the maximum during these years. Future studies may concentrate on the effectiveness of mindfulness in improving the academic performance and enhance positive behaviors and also to eliminate procrastination and other negative behaviors.