Journal Article

Doing what matters in times of stress: No-nonsense meditation and occupational well-being in COVID-19

Levecque, Katia, Van de Velde, Justine, Weijters, Bert, Laureys, Steven

2023

Overview

While the COVID-19 pandemic challenged the general public’s health and well-being, it exacerbated the pre-existing well-being issues in the educational sector in many countries. Mindfulness-based interventions are often applied to protect and promote occupational well-being. To investigate how the well-being benefits of these interventions arise, we selected one accessible technique that is used in most of them: focused attention meditation. In the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, 199 teachers voluntarily practiced five to ten minutes of meditation together with their pupils, every morning for six months. We employed a three-wave longitudinal design to follow any changes in the meditating teachers’ well-being and compared these changes to a waitlist control condition of 42 teachers. Three dimensions of well-being were measured at baseline, half-time, and post-intervention: emotional, cognitive, and physical well-being. Latent growth curve models revealed that the meditation technique not only improves well-being but also prevents the development of well-being problems. The practice of focused attention meditation resulted in improvements in emotional and physical well-being and prevented the development of cognitive well-being problems that were observed within the control condition. The effects were strongest for emotional and cognitive well-being and followed a linear trend. This paper shows that the well-being effects of mindfulness-based interventions are at least in part due to the focused attention meditation that is practiced in them. Occupational groups that experience emotional, cognitive, or physical well-being issues can benefit from a few minutes of focused attention meditation per day. Trial registration: ISRCTN ISRCTN61170784 ( https://doi.org/10.1186/ISRCTN61170784 ).

• Publisher: Public Library of Science,Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subject: Attention / Back pain / Biology and Life Sciences / Care and treatment / COVID-19 / Emotions / Employees / Epidemics / Humans / Hypotheses / Intervention / Management / Medicine and Health Sciences / Meditation / Meditation - psychology / Mental health / Mindfulness / Mindfulness - methods / Multidisciplinary / Neck pain / Neurosciences & behavior / Neurosciences & comportement / Occupational health and safety / Pandemics / Pandemics - prevention & control / People and Places / Psychological aspects / Research and Analysis Methods / Sciences sociales & comportementales, psychologie / Social & behavioral sciences, psychology / Social Sciences / Stress / Teachers / Well being