Why Mindfulness Therapy Can Work For Improving Mental Health

Mindfulness generally refers to slowing down and focusing on the present moment and your current feelings and bodily sensations. Mindfulness can be used in therapy to decrease stress, improve memory and focus, decrease emotional reactivity, improve relationships, and stop rumination. Research shows that mindfulness-based online therapy shows promise and can be effective. You can get the help you deserve through in-person therapy at a therapist’s office or online through an online therapy platform.

What Is Mindfulness?

Mindfulness is a mental state you can achieve by focusing your awareness on the present moment and noticing your bodily sensations, thoughts, and feelings. For those of us with busy schedules and hectic lives, the idea of achieving a mindful mood balance and remembering to notice the present moment may seem out of reach. For others, turning inward may seem scary, as it can bring up hard or painful feelings. When uncomfortable feelings or situations arise, our instinct is often to distract ourselves. But mindfulness allows you to notice and accept your thoughts and feelings without hiding from them or wanting to change them, bringing a sense of peace and increased self-awareness over time.

Acceptance of your thought patterns and feelings can be an important part of mindfulness exercises and working on improving mood disorders. Your focus can easily shift away from the present and into anxiety or rumination if you allow yourself to critique, judge, or try to change the things you're thinking and feeling.

There is no right or wrong way to think, feel, or exist, and mindfulness can encourage you to notice how you're existing. This may allow you to incorporate mindfulness practices and tune into the present moment, letting worries about the past or future drift away.

Why Does Mindfulness Work For Improving Mental Health?

Though mindfulness has its origins in Buddhist meditation, a secular practice of mindfulness has become mainstream in America since the 1970s. Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn launched a mindfulness program (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, or MBSR) at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in 1979. Since then, thousands of people have studied mindfulness's physical and psychological benefits. His MBSR techniques are used in schools, hospitals, and other institutions worldwide.

What Is Mindfulness Therapy? Mindfulness Based Online Therapy Interventions

The basic principles of mindfulness-based therapy are a focus on awareness and presence. As technology continually advances, more and more services are offered online, including mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) and other mindfulness exercises. Despite the success many people have had with online therapy, some people may still wonder if therapeutic interventions are as effective online as they are in person. Research shows that online therapies can effectively treat anxiety, depression, and trauma, and there is typically no difference in patient satisfaction when comparing online therapy to in-person therapy. For both online and in-person therapy, outcomes are generally better the more time a patient spends in therapy.

While there are many studies on online therapy, less research has been done specifically on online MBI therapy. However, a recent explorative meta-analysis aimed to discover the efficacy of online MBIs on depression, anxiety, stress, well-being, and mindfulness. It analyzed records from previous studies to compare improvement rates from in-person MBI to online MBI.

According to the systematic review, online MBIs and MBCT therapists offer several advantages compared to face-to-face therapies. Online therapy typically does not have long waiting lists, is available to people in rural areas, is available for people to utilize in their own space, allows for more comfort, allows for anonymity, and can be less costly. Additionally, a 2014 study conducted on 500 adults in the United States showed that many prefer individual and online mindfulness therapy interventions over group formats. For nearly half of the participants, the internet was the first choice of therapy format. This suggests that, for many people, online MBCT teachers may be an acceptable or even ideal form of therapy.

Promising Results

After all of the studies were considered, researchers found improvements in depression, anxiety, well-being, mindfulness, and significant improvements in stress after MBCT programs, whether in an individual or group setting. This was not necessarily new information, as over 200 studies with randomized-controlled trials have demonstrated MBCT techniques have the ability to improve stress, anxiety, and depression. However, the results were particularly promising for stress reduction, with the improvements in stress from MBI comparable to stress improvements from traditional MBSR and in-person MBI. Additionally, this study revealed that online MBI could also be particularly effective at improving mindfulness.

Although research generally indicates that online therapeutic interventions can be as effective as face-to-face interventions, the findings of this study may suggest that online MBIs are not equally effective as in-person MBIs when it comes to reducing depression and anxiety. However, there was a lot of variability across the studies in terms of the study population, and researchers suggest that certain subgroups may benefit more from online-delivered MBIs than other groups. For example, people with psychological symptoms (like depression) may benefit more from online MBI than those with physical symptoms (like chronic pain). Researchers note that no firm conclusions can be drawn about whether online or in-person MBI is more effective, as more research needs to be done.

All of the information analyzed and discovered about online MBI was relatively new. This is one of the first meta-analyses to analyze the effects of online MBI on mental health. It is agreed that online interventions for mental health will continue to gain popularity as time goes on. The information gathered from this study will aid in future research on the efficacy of online therapeutic interventions.

The Future Of Online Mindfulness-Based Interventions

The primary goal of this explorative meta-analysis was to estimate the overall effect of online MBIs on depression, anxiety, stress, and well-being, and the results demonstrated that online MBIs might be a good alternative to in-person mindfulness therapy, especially for those looking to improve stress levels.

Ultimately, this research indicates that MBIs may be used in various manners and for various purposes. Online MBIs could be an acceptable and useful alternative for those who may benefit from cultivating their mindfulness skills but cannot begin traditional in-person forms of MBI therapy. Online MBIs could also be a good option for those on a waitlist for traditional face-to-face MBIs.

Additional research is needed to discover if online MBIs are as effective as in-person MBIS, and future research may also benefit from focusing on more narrow and specific criteria. Some examples include a) testing the long-term results of online MBI; b) assessing the efficacy of online MBI in different subgroups (somatic versus psychological illnesses); c) testing the utility of online MBI across various modalities (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction, Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy). It may also be useful to consider the effects of online MBI based on its delivery mode, whether by mobile phone or computer.

Dr. Kabat-Zinn said in an NPR interview, "The more present we are, the more we are our full dimensionality of being, the more we are there for our family, for our friends and our colleagues, and for the world itself." When we're able to acknowledge and accept our present condition non-judgmentally, we may more easily handle the ups and downs of life without becoming overwhelmed by them. 

Online Therapy Can Improve Mental Health

One of the advantages of mindfulness-based therapy is that it can reduce stress levels. Online therapy is another potential clinical psychology method of reducing stress levels, and it can be an option for getting professional help, particularly if you have a busy schedule, feel uncomfortable speaking to a therapist in person, or don’t have a suitable therapist nearby. Online therapy can remove these barriers to treatment so that you can get the help you deserve.

As this study explains, online therapy can be as effective as in-office therapy, particularly for anxiety and the effects of stress. If you’re interested in learning more about mindfulness, it can be possible to connect with a therapist who has experience in using this tool to help their clients improve their mental health.