Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT)
Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, also known as MBCT, is a group-based treatment program that was originally developed by Segal, Williams, & Teasdale (2002) 1 to prevent relapse in clinical populations with recurrent major depressive disorder (MDD). The MBCT program helps participants learn to step out of habitual, automatic patterns of the mind and body that arise during depressive episodes. MBCT targets cognitive reactivity by teaching participants to develop different ways of relating to sensations, thoughts, and feelings that contribute to depressive relapse. By becoming more aware of body sensations, feelings, and thoughts through mindfulness techniques, participants learn to recognize, accept, and disengage from habitual patterns that might cause recurring challenges.
Course Format: The MBCT program follows a manualized protocol 1 including The Mindful Way Workbook 2 for course participants (Segal, Williams, & Teasdale, 2002). MBCT provides instructions for integrating meditation, mindfulness movement, and cognitive techniques over an 8-week course. In the first four sessions, participants learn the basics of mindfulness. This includes learning to become aware of how little attention is paid in daily life, noticing how quickly the mind shifts, and restoring focus using body scan, a technique that teaches participants to pay attention to bodily sensations in a gradual sequence from the feet to the head. Participants also learn how mind wandering allows negative thoughts and feelings to escalate. In the last four sessions, participants focus on recognizing and skillfully responding to shifts in mood. As participants develop their mindfulness practices in class and at home using audio recorded instructions, participants learn to approach patterns of negative moods and thoughts by simply allowing and exploring these thoughts while using breathing practices as a focal point for their awareness. MBCT is not recommended for patients who are acutely suicidal, currently abusing drugs or alcohol, experiencing a major crisis, and are active in other mental health treatment.
“By becoming more aware of body sensations, feelings, and thoughts through mindfulness techniques, participants learn to recognize, accept, and disengage from habitual patterns that might cause recurring challenges.”
Instructor Requirements: Similar to other mindfulness-based interventions, the MBCT course has instructor requirements. Importantly, the instructor must maintain an on-going meditation practice to appropriately and skillfully navigate the challenges that participants might encounter. The creators of MBCT emphasize that the instructors’ basic understanding of mindfulness and personal orientation will be one of the most powerful influences affecting this process. Additionally, although the second edition of the MBCT manual (Segal, Williams, & Teasdale, 2012) aims to cultivate mindfulness and self-compassion, the authors advise against explicitly teaching self-compassion to clinically depressed individuals, as this could perpetuate feelings of being unlovable and unworthy. Instead, the instructor should implicitly embody kindness and compassion through their presence, guidance in meditation practice, and responses to participants’ discussion3.
Course Outcomes: MBCT has been developed to improve concentration, mindful awareness of thoughts, emotions, and body sensations, acceptance, decentering, and a non-fixing attitude. According to several empirical studies3, MBCT participants report a range of improvements for depression, anxiety, rumination, insomnia, tension, mindfulness, compassion, self-compassion, concentration, resilience, optimism, and quality of life.
Clinical Populations: Robust empirical evidence from meta-analyses (an analysis of many independent studies on the same subject) supports its therapeutic effectiveness across a range of disorders. A growing body of empirical studies demonstrates that MBCT significantly reduces the risk of depressive relapse by 35% compared to standard treatment, and by 44% for patients with three or more depressive episodes5. These are similar to the rates found for antidepressant treatment. MBCT has also been used to treat different clinical populations and disorders including children6, adolescents7, pregnant women at risk for depression8, hypochondriasis9, chronic fatigue syndrome10, tinnitus11, auditory hallucinations12, insomnia13, social phobia14, generalized anxiety disorder15, panic disorder, depression in primary care16, and cancer patients17. As clinicians and researchers continue to test and expand its clinical application, MBCT has become one of the most versatile mindfulness-based interventions.
Official Link: MBCT Protocol
References
Michael is pursuing his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at the University of Hawai’i, Mānoa.
The growing recognition of transdisciplinarity’s powerful nature offers researchers valuable opportunities for collaboration
Does the scientific content that we read always mean what it claims?
The growing recognition of transdisciplinarity’s powerful nature offers researchers valuable opportunities for collaboration
Mindfulness practices like critical analysis can reveal the mental formations behind these tools.
By providing an immersive, engrossing, and controlled visual and auditory experience in which participants can practice mindfulness techniques, Virtual Reality (VR) systems can create immersive, ecologically valid, first-person experiences that can even tap into physiological reactions that align with real-world experiences.
The researchers were interested in understanding if forgiveness acts as a mechanism by which mindfulness relates to relationship satisfaction. They speculated that being mindful would allow individuals to be aware of their own and their partners’ emotions in a non-judgmental and non-reactive way. The increased awareness would make people more forgiving of partner transgressions, thereby enhancing relationship satisfaction.
Emerging studies are highlighting the effectiveness of mindfulness, gratitude and hopefulness as positive psychological tools in helping people cope with anxiety and stress. These practices have also been considered beneficial in enhancing psychological health and well-being.
After nearly three decades, a ban prohibiting public schools to offer yoga as an elective for grades K-12 has been overturned in Alabama.
Rather than proposing a single definition, mindfulness might be better understood in relation to the phenomenology of the various contemplative traditions and practices that intend to develop mindfulness.
Ruben Laukkonen is a cognitive neuroscientist at the VU University of Amsterdam. His research focuses on sudden insight experiences and the effects of intensive meditation on the mind and brain. Using a combination of neuroimaging, machine learning, and neuro-phenomenology, Ruben is investigating some of the most rare states of consciousness accessible to human beings. He has published articles in leading journals, given talks at prestigious conferences, and has written on topics that range from artificial intelligence to psychedelics. Ruben has an eclectic contemplative background, including different meditation traditions such as Zen, Advaita, and Theravada.
Despite significant advances in the field of psychology due to increased research … the usual care of people with chronic medical conditions still often neglects the psychological issues associated with the physical dimension of the disease.
Despite growing knowledge that mindfulness meditation can enhance emotional wellbeing, very little is known about how it all works. How exactly does the act of meditation help us deal with the emotional rollercoaster of everyday life? Is mindfulness training actually “transferrable” to real world situations? What’s going on in the brain? Can we even measure it?
“We focus on concentration,” Jones says. “So rather than sharpening your focus, which is what happens when you get anxious, the goal is to relax your focus.” The ability to utilize your breath to calm your nervous system is the first step to teaching mindfulness.
How does self-compassion protect depressed adolescents? Quieting the self may be the key.
A study led by Alexandra Martelli investigated whether more mindful individuals (based on self-report measure scores) would respond to social rejection with less distress and if certain neurological mechanisms in the brain’s prefrontal cortex can potentially explain the role of mindfulness in reduced social distress.
A research team from Valencia, Spain recently investigated the effects of a brief mindfulness-based intervention on both mood and biological markers on a sample of health professional students.
A new study by Kim and colleagues explored how compassion-based training can affect two self-regulatory styles and its relationship to neural, physiological, and behavioral responses.
Torre and colleagues recruited 70 HCWs from two hospitals in Rome, Italy for a 4-week course in yoga and mindfulness.
A team of researchers based in the perceived epicenter of the virus, Wuhan, China, recently tested whether a brief mindfulness intervention delivered through an app could be effective for reducing anxiety and protecting nightly sleep during the unfolding pandemic.
Mindfulness practices can enhance a therapist’s ability to intentionally and flexibly regulate attention as well as emotional reactivity which has been demonstrated to influence burnout.
A new study investigated whether a brief mindfulness training designed to reduce physician burnout could be delivered through a smartphone app.
The current study reviewed the wider scientific literature for the role of yoga and mindfulness interventions in the treatment of severe mental illness.
The amount of research involving mindfulness interventions has grown exponentially; however, only in the last decade has mindfulness research involving adolescents rapidly increased.
Mindfulness and self-compassion are theorized to disrupt the maladaptive repetition of negative thoughts and emotions for patients with chronic or mental illnesses, who are particularly susceptible to psychosocial distress.
According to the Association for Mindfulness in Education, mindfulness can increase students’ emotional regulation, social skills, self-esteem, and organizational capacities.
There is promising evidence that 70% of smokers would like to quit but less than 5% of unassisted attempts at quitting are actually successful.
In a recent pilot study by Suzette Glasner, Ph.D. and her team at the Integrated Substance Abuse Programs at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, they evaluated the effects of Mindfulness-Based Relapse Prevention (MBRP) on reducing relapse susceptibility among stimulant-dependent adults receiving a contingency management (CM) intervention.
A major implication of the study suggests the distal effects of intensive retreat practice on respiration rates, a benefit not necessarily conferred by a brief, but full-day meditation session.
Researchers are exploring mindfulness-based interventions as a long-term treatment options to address the multitude of symptoms after cancer has been treated.
While the scientific study of mindfulness has exponentially increased over the past few decades, only recently has the scientific community focused on the effects of meditation training on biological aging.
Tell us about your idea. Nearly any subject related to the science of mindfulness is fair game.