Investigating the effectiveness of a mobile-based mindfulness application on psychological well-being and rumination.

McGuane, Jasmine (2017) Investigating the effectiveness of a mobile-based mindfulness application on psychological well-being and rumination. Manchester Metropolitan University. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

Research has frequently identified that students are vulnerable to mental health issues which is becoming a common problem (Andrew and Wilding, 2004), therefore intervention for such is essential. Anxiety, depression and rumination are three factors that negatively influence the psychological well-being of students and mindfulness has shown to improve these factors (Hofmann et al., 2010; Gaynor et al., 2014). Mindfulness has offered promising results for improvement of psychological well-being, however the duration of mindfulness interventions is impractical for students. The present study explored the effectiveness of a mobile-based mindfulness application on the psychological well-being of students. Forty students were randomly assigned to either a mindfulness condition (n = 20) or an active control condition (n = 20) to investigate whether a short-term mindfulness intervention improves trait mindfulness and reduces anxiety, depression and rumination over a ten-day period. The mindfulness condition experienced a significant increase in self-reported trait mindfulness and significant decrease in anxiety, depression and rumination from pre-post intervention. No significant changes in any of the variables were found for the control condition. The present study offers theoretical directions for using mobile-based interventions, whilst addressing implications for future research.