Mindfulness app promotes inner calm in healthcare workers

App-guided mindfulness practice helps reduce stress and improve the mental wellbeing of healthcare workers, providing an attractive tool for easing the mental toll of a pandemic, according to a Singapore study.

In a 3-week trial involving 80 local healthcare workers, mindfulness practice using a smartphone app exerted positive effects on multiple measures, including fear of COVID-19 (p=0.005), compassion satisfaction (p=0.007), trait mindfulness (p=0.002), self-compassion (p=0.005), sleep quality (p=0.002), and the forward digit span task (p<0.001), as compared with an active control condition involving playing cognitive games on a mobile device. These effects were evident after only 1 month of use. [Mindfulness 2022;doi:10.1007/s12671-022-01975-8]

After the 3-week intervention, there were no changes noted in any of the outcome measures between the mindfulness practice and active condition groups.

The mindfulness app used in the study was Headspace. This app features a guided meditation where a narrator talks through a mental exercise and meditation session aimed at achieving a goal, such as reducing stress or coping with anxiety.

In a review of 560 existing mindfulness-based mobile apps available in the market, Headspace scored highly across several domains such as engagement, functionality, visual aesthetics, information quality, and subjective quality. [JMIR Mhealth Uhealth 2015;3:e82]

Finding calm in uncertain times

Despite the lack of significant changes in anxiety, Headspace produced a marked reduction in fear of COVID-19 compared to the active control, according to the investigators, adding that the brief mindfulness practice helped to somehow make less intense the perceptions of threat and fear that were more salient at the time of the study—the COVID-19 pandemic that was developing in Singapore and the greater unknown regarding the disease’s medical risks of and the capacity of the healthcare system in managing the pandemic.

“Interestingly, both trait mindfulness and self-compassion accounted for the effects of Headspace on burnout and compassion satisfaction, suggesting that shifts in these processes exert more impact on the healthcare workers’ professional quality of life relative to other outcomes… [as well as enable] a greater capacity to derive joy and satisfaction from helping others,” the investigators pointed out.

“Beyond burnout and compassion satisfaction, improvements in self-compassion also mediated the effects of Headspace on depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms at follow-up,” they added.

With mindfulness, healthcare workers may take a more decentred and nonjudgmental outlook when it comes to their thoughts and emotions. This facilitates a kinder attitude in relating to themselves and, in turn, reduce emotional reactivity and vulnerability to psychological symptoms, the investigators explained. [Mindfulness 2016;7:1170-1181]

The overall findings of the present study, the investigators believe, have implications for improving psychological support resources for healthcare workers amidst a pandemic.

“Future research should evaluate to what extent the benefits of using Headspace would sustain in the absence of guidance or coaching. On the other hand, it will be of value to examine whether a more intensive intervention (eg, one that involves in-person mindfulness training combined with self-guided practice) would yield stronger intervention effects,” they said.