Can Brief-mindfulness Interventions Improve Psychiatric Symptoms?

Mindfulness-based interventions have gained increasing popularity in recent years as effective treatment for mental illness. Mindfulness is defined as paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally: "Being", rather than "Doing". Such mental states can improve emotional regulation through frontal cortex inhibition of otherwise dysregulated subcortical emotion-related circuits. Formal mindfulness approaches such as mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) and mindfulness-based stress reduction, have been highly effective in a broad range of psychiatric disorders. Mindfulness-oriented interventions, are potentially useful in acute psychiatric hospitalizations, since they can be delivered as group therapies and are be both cost-effective and scalable. However, such interventions have rarely been provided to patients during psychiatric hospitalizations, where patients are treated for a variety of psychiatric diagnoses, and may have unpredictable lengths of stay. Additionally, there had been concerns that longer traditional mindfulness based interventions (e.g. 30 minute silent meditation) may exacerbate acute psychosis. However, strong evidence suggests that patients with psychotic symptoms appear to be largely unaffected by shorter interventions. Similarly, MBCT have been helpful to treat other major reasons for hospitalization such as: bipolar disorder, severe anxiety, substance use disorders, and major depressive disorder. Few studies have examined mindfulness-oriented treatments in inpatient settings, including two small studies involving mindfulness groups on an acute psychiatric inpatient ward (n\<10) . Another study (n=23) offered inpatients with a diagnosis of major depressive disorder mindfulness-based activities. All studies concluded that mindfulness-oriented approaches in inpatient settings were feasible, although these needed to be brief interventions, given the risks and lack of efficacy of longer MBI (e.g.