Background:
Meditation, yoga, and mindfulness are popular interventions at universities and tertiary education institutes to improve mental health. However, the effects on depression, anxiety, and stress are unclear. This study assessed the effectiveness of meditation, yoga, and mindfulness on symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress in tertiary education students.
Methods:
We searched Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), PubMed, PsycINFO and identified 11,936 articles. After retrieving 181 papers for full-text screening, 24 randomized controlled trials were included in the qualitative analysis. We conducted a random-effects meta-analysis amongst 23 studies with 1,373 participants.
Results:
At post-test, after exclusion of outliers, effect sizes for depression, g = 0.42 (95% CI: 0.16–0.69), anxiety g = 0.46 (95% CI: 0.34–0.59), stress g = 0.42 (95% CI: 0.27–0.57) were moderate. Heterogeneity was low (
I
2
= 6%). When compared to active control, the effect decreased to g = 0.13 (95% CI: −0.18–0.43). No RCT reported on safety, only two studies reported on academic achievement, most studies had a high risk of bias.
Conclusions:
Most studies were of poor quality and results should be interpreted with caution. Overall moderate effects were found which decreased substantially when interventions were compared to active control. It is unclear whether meditation, yoga or mindfulness affect academic achievement or affect have any negative side effects.
This systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to examine the effects of stress management interventions in reducing stress, depression, and anxiety among college students. Two separate meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials were conducted using the random-effects model, for students with highstress levels (n = 8) and for the unselected college student population (n = 46). Overall, main results showed moderate intervention effects for stress, depression, and anxiety in both groups. Subgroup analyses yielded significant differences related to the theoretical background, the type of control condition, and the length of the intervention in trials targeting students with high-stress levels. However, these subgroup differences, except for the theoretical background, were not observed in trials including unselected samples. Our results suggest that stress management interventions may be effective in reducing distress among college students.
Public Health Significance StatementSymptoms of stress are common among college students. Stress management programs are provided to help students in reducing stress. The present study showed that stress management programs have the potential to decrease stress and prevent mental health problems in higher education.
This is a repository copy of Association of task-shared psychological interventions with depression outcomes in low-and middle-income countries : a systematic review and individual patient data meta-analysis.
in the online setting have become widespread. This study aimed to examine the experiences and opinions of psychological counselors regarding online supervision and peer supervision.Research Methods: This qualitative study included six psychological counselors as participants. The data of the study were collected using semi-structured individual interviews and a focus group interview. Written documents and transcriptions of voice recordings were analyzed based on thematic analysis. Findings: The results of the study related to the supervision experiences of psychological counselors yielded the following themes: role of the supervisor, supervision process, feedback from the supervisor, and the number of psychological counselors and clients.
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