Experiential Avoidance as the Mechanism of Mindfulness Intervention in Reducing Emotional Distress: Daily Dairy Research

Peking University

Status: Not yet enrolling

Conditions: Emotional Distress

Treatments: Behavioral: Mindfulness Intervention for Emotional Distress

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT05981248

E20230815

Details and patient eligibility

About

This study hopes to:

1. explore whether three weeks of MIED could promote experiential avoidance.
2. explore experiential avoidance could be a mediation of outcomes of MIED.

Full description

Experiential avoidance refers to individuals resisting experiences or trying to eliminate certain experiences (such as emotions, thoughts, physical feelings, memory and behavioral tendencies, etc.), and trying to adopt corresponding strategies to change these experiences and the situations in which the experiences are generated (Hayes, Wilson, Gifford, Follette, & Strosahl, 1996). Experiential avoidance has been proved to be a maintenance factor for many psychological disorders (Boelen & Reijntjes, 2008), and trying to hide or suppress unpleasant thoughts, feelings and physical feelings will increase the frequency and pain of these same experiences (Gross,1998; Gross,2002; Sloan, 2004; Wegner, 1994). According to some reviews, experiential avoidance is one of the beneficial effects of mindfulness (Brown, Bravo, Roos, & Pearson, 2015; Shapiro et al., 2006). However, no study has examined experiential avoidance as mediator in mindfulness intervention whether in the between-subject or in within-subject level . Therefore, this study uses daily diary research explore the role of experiential avoidance as the effective mechanism of mindfulness intervention.

Enrollment: 200 estimated patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18 to 65 years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Subjects with scores greater than 21 on the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale.

Exclusion criteria

• Subjects who could not access the Internet;
• Subjects with insufficient Chinese ability;
• Subjects who have participated in mindfulness based projects for more than 6 weeks before, and / or the current frequency of meditation practice is more than once a week;
• Patients with schizophrenia or psychotic affective disorder, current organic mental disorder, substance abuse disorder and generalized developmental disorder;
• Subjects at risk of suicide.

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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200 participants in 2 patient groups

the MIED+TAU group

Experimental group

Description:

provide standard audio instructions for mindfulness exercises, introduce the nature and law of anxiety, depression and other emotions, the source of anxiety, depression and other emotional distress, and the strategies and methods to alleviate emotional distress. These exercises, knowledge and strategies are based on the latest progress in the field of psychological counseling and treatment, and their application in daily life can help alleviate anxiety, depression and other emotional problems.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Mindfulness Intervention for Emotional Distress

the TAU-only group

No Intervention group

Description:

treated as usual