By Melinda Krigel
Mental health and emotional well-being hit an all-time low during the COVID-19 pandemic, but psychological problems continue to afflict many people in the U.S. Work stress may be a primary contributor – it being strongly associated with poorer emotional and physical well-being, as well as high absenteeism and low presenteeism. Around 8% of U.S. health care costs are attributable to work-related stressors, particularly among medical providers, with 45% reporting high levels of job burnout.
Can employees benefit from a digital mindfulness program?
Mindfulness meditation may reduce work-related stress, as it seeks to encourage awareness of the present moment and promote self-regulation. While workplaces have invested in in-person mindfulness programs, these formats cannot be easily scaled and disseminated, making them less cost-effective and leaving many without adequate opportunities for reducing stress. Mindfulness delivered via self-guided smartphone apps may offer convenient alternatives, with the benefit of standardization of instruction and participants controlling how they access treatment.
To determine whether self-guided mindfulness could prove a potent tool in combating workplace stress and burnout, researchers from the UC San Francisco Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences launched a large mindfulness trial for over 1,400 UCSF employees. They found that those who received digital mindfulness meditation (versus a control group) felt greater satisfaction and engagement with their job months later. They also felt happier, less anxious and more mindful of their daily life.
The study published Jan. 14 in JAMA Network Open.
“Our team found significant, sustained improvements in well-being, job enjoyment and mindfulness, particularly for those who meditated more,” said study first author Rachel Radin, PhD, a psychologist and assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. “This study confirms prior findings indicating psychological benefits of mindfulness practice for employees and extends them to a digital platform.”
As little as five minutes a day decreases stress
In the study, the researchers randomized a large sample of employees at UCSF (an academic medical center) to a commercially available digitally-delivered meditation platform (Headspace) or to a waitlist control condition. As a primary measure of the treatment’s effectiveness, they looked at the immediate treatment impacts and the maintenance of improvements in the perception of psychological distress. Secondarily, they examined work stress, job strain, burnout, work engagement, subjective mindfulness, and symptoms of depression and anxiety in both groups. They also looked at how well those in the treatment group adhered to the intervention.
Participants randomized to digital meditation showed significant improvements in all study outcomes immediately post-treatment, including reductions in levels of global stress, job strain and work burnout, depression and anxiety. They also had increases in mindfulness, job reward and work engagement. At a four-month follow-up, these improvements were maintained. Greater treatment adherence of at least five meditation minutes per day was associated with greater reductions in perceived stress.
“The mechanisms by which digital mindfulness interventions impart benefits on both general and work-related stress may include an improved capacity to cope with and positively reappraise stressful situations, said study co-senior author Aric Prather, PhD, the Pritzker Family Fund Endowed Chair in Health and Community and professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. “Digital mindfulness appears to be a low-cost, low-burden way of improving employee health at scale.”
The study team believes future studies may needed to enhance compliance to the treatment intervention and to better characterize the treatment mechanisms. In the short run, increased mindfulness can help overcome trauma and loss in addition to improving well-being.
“Mindfulness is not just for daily stress. It is a critical component of coping with acute stress and preventing trauma from having long term effects on mental and physical health, said study co-senior author Elissa Epel, PhD, the Sarlo-Ekman Endowed Chair in the Study of Human Emotion, professor, and a vice chair in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. “For example, right now there is an emergency response to bring psychological first aid to victims of the Los Angeles wildfires, and mindfulness is one critical component of that response. It is used as a grounding technique that shifts our attention away from anxious thoughts and to the present moment, through sensory experiences such as focusing on touch, sight, sound, or our breathing. This attentional shift to our senses can quickly calm our nervous system.”
Additional UCSF authors include: Julie Vacarro, MA; Elena Fromer; Sarah E. Ahmadi; Joanna Y. Guan; and Sarah M. Fisher, MS. Outside authors include: Sarah D. Pressman, PhD; John F. Hunter, PhD; Kate Sweeny, PhD; A. Janet Tomiyama, PhD; Lauren Tiongco Hofschneider, PhD; Matthew J. Zawadzki, PhD; and Larisa Gavrilova, PhD.
Funding: The research was supported by the UCSF Healthy Campus Network, Headspace, Inc., and the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) K23AT011048 (to RMR).
Read the study
- JAMA Network Open: Digital meditation to target employee stress: A randomized clinical trial
About UCSF Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
The UCSF Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute are among the nation's foremost resources in the fields of child, adolescent, adult, and geriatric mental health. Together they constitute one of the largest departments in the UCSF School of Medicine and the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, with a focus on providing unparalleled patient care, conducting impactful research, training the next generation of behavioral health leaders, and advancing diversity, health equity, and community across the field.
UCSF Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences conducts its clinical, educational, and research efforts at a variety of locations in Northern California, including the UCSF Nancy Friend Pritzker Psychiatry Building; UCSF Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital; UCSF Health medical centers and community hospitals across San Francisco; UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals in San Francisco and Oakland; Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center; the San Francisco VA Health Care System; UCSF Fresno; and numerous community-based sites around the San Francisco Bay Area.
About the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences
The UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, established by the extraordinary generosity of Joan and Sanford I. "Sandy" Weill, brings together world-class researchers with top-ranked physicians to solve some of the most complex challenges in the human brain.
The UCSF Weill Institute leverages UCSF’s unrivaled bench-to-bedside excellence in the neurosciences. It unites three UCSF departments—Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Neurology, and Neurological Surgery—that are highly esteemed for both patient care and research, as well as the Neuroscience Graduate Program, a cross-disciplinary alliance of nearly 100 UCSF faculty members from 15 basic-science departments, as well as the UCSF Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases, a multidisciplinary research center focused on finding effective treatments for Alzheimer’s disease, frontotemporal dementia, Parkinson’s disease, and other neurodegenerative disorders.
About UCSF
The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is exclusively focused on the health sciences and is dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. UCSF Health, which serves as UCSF’s primary academic medical center, includes top-ranked specialty hospitals and other clinical programs, and has affiliations throughout the Bay Area.
