Mindfulness is as effective as cognitive behavioral therapy for treating depression and anxiety. Recent studies, such as the one conducted by Lund University in Sweden in 2014 ‘Mindfulness group therapy in primary care patients with depression, anxiety and stress and adjustment disorders: randomised controlled trial’, found a reduction in the symptomatology of depression and anxiety after receiving group Mindfulness treatment.
Can Mindfulness reduce anxiety and depression?
The data from the aforementioned study demonstrate how Mindfulness should be considered an alternative to traditional psychotherapy and can unlock access to care for these patients in primary care centers that lack sufficient resources to offer individualized therapeutic interventions.
The world of psychotherapy is in full revolution; so-called third-generation therapies are demonstrating great effectiveness, and the concept of emotional well-being is gaining ground in all areas of life. ISEP, aware of this change, has launched the Master in Psychotherapy of Emotional Well-being to train psychologists in Intrapersonal Intelligence, Mindfulness, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Art Therapy, Transpersonal Therapy, etc. Specialization in integrative psychotherapies is becoming an indispensable requirement for the profession.
Concepts such as mind-body integration, mindfulness, spirituality, flow state, emotional release… once so far removed from psychologists’ offices, are now a door to well-being. Psychologist and psychotherapist Julieta París, coordinator of the master’s program, points out, “we need to update the work we do in consultation and become facilitators of emotional well-being.”
Benefits of Mindfulness against anxiety or depression
Mindfulness training in patients with anxiety or depression disorders offers multiple benefits, as it provides the possibility to:
– Attend deeply to stimuli.
– Practice attentional refocusing.
– Deeply pause in the present and in the moment, instant by instant.
– Bias towards experiencing thought only as a mental event and not as reality itself.
– Develop self-awareness.
– Promote states of relaxation.
– Optimize coping resources for stressors.
Furthermore, the training of health professionals in mindfulness, full attention, or any other contextual therapy has improved therapists’ skills by increasing empathy and perspective-taking ability, enhanced interpersonal functioning skills and stress management, and increased self-compassion, as well as reducing work-related stress, among other benefits.
Thus, emotional well-being psychotherapy not only achieves significant improvements in the patient but also provides the therapist with new tools to offer a more effective psychotherapeutic intervention.