Impact of Teaching "Meditation Techniques" on the Mental Health and Quality of Life of Medical Students

Studies show a high number of medical students suffering from mental health problems. Although there are several studies investigating how these problems could impact students' life and performance, few studies have investigated interventions to minimize this distress. One of these interventions is the mindfulness meditation, that has already been extensively studied in the scientific literature showing promising results. Nevertheless, there are very few studies which investigated how mindfulness could be implemented as a mandatory course. The present study aims to investigate how students exposed to mindfulness differ from students not exposed to this technique concerning their mental health and quality of life in a short and long term period.

Design:

This is an intervention protocol using a randomized controlled clinical trial with cross-over, in order to compare if the implementation of mindfulness for first year medical students will improve their mental health and quality of life in the short term (3 months).

The intervention group (group 1) will be exposed to mindfulness in the beginning of the medical course and will be compared to a control group (group 2), not exposed to mindfulness (exposed to theoretical classes) for 3 months. After that, the intervention group (group 1) will receive theoretical classes and the control group (group 2) will be exposed to the mindfulness techniques for 3 months (cross-over). Therefore, both groups (groups 1 and 2) will be exposed to mindfulness in the first year of undergraduation, however in different moments of the course. Then, all first year medical students exposed to mindfulness (groups 1 and 2) will be compared to another class, which didn't have this mindfulness mandatory course in their formation (group 3). They will be compared after 6 months and after one-year of intervention (long-term effect).

Interventions: