The Effectiveness of MBSR in Natural Environments

Overview

With the prescription of antidepressants at record levels, and a huge demand for psychological therapies, health and social care providers are interested in cost-effective interventions to improve wellbeing and to prevent mental health problems. At the same time, there is a renewed interest in complementary and alternative therapies, such as yoga, meditation practices, and aromatherapy to support psychological resilience and prevent mental illness. Mindfulness practice has grown quickly as one such complementary and alternative approach to coping with certain forms of mental illness and symptoms of poor mental and physical health. The potential salutogenic benefits of mindfulness practice have been recognized, and mindfulness practice has received a great deal of attention as an intervention in a clinical/medical setting to address specific disorders (e.g. chronic pain or anxiety). The most widely used MBI is mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), which offers an intensive 8-week programme (as well as shorter 4-6-week versions) involving a range of formal sitting and walking meditation, body scanning, mindful movement and informal mindfulness practices. Reviews of the effects and clinical effectiveness of MBSR indicate positive results in terms of the treatment of a range of different physiological and psychosocial conditions, including stress reduction and relief from emotional distress, depression and anxiety. Whilst this evidence demonstrates the significant mental health and wellbeing benefits of mindfulness-based interventions, there has been little research into combining mindfulness with restorative experiences, such as exposure to nature. The aim of the study is to investigate whether the effectiveness of MBSR are enhanced when combined with a natural environment. The investigators hypothesise that MBSR in a natural environment results in greater nature connectedness than in a built outdoor or an indoor environment (hypothesis 1). It is also hypothesised that MBSR achieves the best mental health and wellbeing outcomes when conducted in a natural environment (hypothesis 2).

The experimental design combined MBSR with an environmental condition. Participants were randomly assigned to brief MBSR in one of the three different environments (i.e., natural outdoor environment, built outdoor environment and indoor environment). All participants were asked to attend the brief MBSR programme for 6 weeks with 1-hour sessions. The weekly MBSR session included sitting and body scanning meditation, mindfulness exercises and group discussion led by a qualified mindfulness facilitator. During the experiment, participants were asked to complete the same questions in DASS-21 four times: baseline, after 3 weeks, after 6 weeks (at the completion of the 6-week MBSR) and one-month follow-up. In addition, participants who attended at least five of the six MBSR sessions were invited to donate their hair samples to measure the change of their stress level.