Responding to the COVID-19 public health emergency: The usefulness of an online brief psychological intervention with Italian university students.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Cerutti R
PROVIDER: S-EPMC9538663 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Aug
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Responding to the COVID-19 public health emergency: The usefulness of an online brief psychological intervention with Italian university students.
Cerutti Rita R Spensieri Valentina V Amendola Simone S Biuso Giuseppe Stefano GS Renzi Alessia A Tambelli Renata R
Psychology in the schools 20220829
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about new stressors on university students, with a negative impact on their mental health and well-being. The purpose of this study was to examine the usefulness of a brief psychodynamically oriented intervention on general functioning by investigating changes in symptoms of depression, anxiety, hopelessness, and burnout. The sample was comprised of 67 university students (22.4% males), with a mean age of 23.27 (standard deviation (SD) = 3.27), who asked for psy ...[more]
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Project description:BackgroundPsychological distress in University settings has grown and became a public health concern. In this context, contemplative practices such as mindfulness have been proposed as a strategy to help students on stress management.MethodsForty university students (20 female), aged between 18 to 30 years (mean = 24.15; SD = 3.56), with no previous experience with meditation or yoga were recruited at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte and randomized to a mindfulness training (MT) or active control (AC) groups. We analyzed measures of anxiety, affect, stress, as well as state and trait mindfulness in order to evaluate the effects of trait mindfulness and a brief mindfulness intervention in forty healthy young students. Participants were classified as Low (n = 27, females = 13) or High (n = 13, females = 7) Trait Mindfulness by k-means clustering and compared between them using Wilcoxon sum rank test. Furthermore, the sample was randomly allocated to an AC (n = 20, females = 10) or a MT (n = 20, females = 10) group, and mixed analysis of variance was performed to analyze the effect of interventions. The mechanisms and role of trait mindfulness in the intervention was assessed by a moderated mediation analysis.ResultsWe found that High Trait individuals have lower anxiety trait, anxiety state and perceived stress levels. Only the MT group reduced their anxiety state and perceived stress after the intervention and increased their state mindfulness. Both groups reduced negative affect and cortisol, and no change was found in positive affect. Moderated mediation analysis showed that the training-induced change in state mindfulness mediated the increase in positive affect and the decrease in perceived stress and cortisol, regardless of trait mindfulness. For anxiety state the decrease only occurred in individuals with High Trait Mindfulness.ConclusionsTogether, these results suggest that higher trait mindfulness is associated with low levels of psychological distress and that a brief mindfulness-based intervention seems to be useful to reduce distress measures in university students.Trial registrationReBEC, U1111-1194-8661. Registered 28 March 2017-Retrospectively registered, http://www.ensaiosclinicos.gov.br/rg/RBR-7b8yh8.
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