Who Benefits More? Optimising Mindfulness Based Interventions for Improved Psychological Outcomes

Health and well-being are increasingly being emphasized in modern society. In response, mindfulness-based training (MBT) (e.g. Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) (Kabat-Zinn,1990)) is slowly gaining popularity as a method to alleviate the stress of modern day living. MBT involves bringing one's attention to the present moment, stopping one's thoughts from drifting into concerns about the past or the future It has significant effects on improving mental health via reducing symptoms of stress, anxiety and depression (Fjorback, Arendt, Ørnbøl, Fink & Walach, 2019). Local studies have similarly demonstrated the efficacy of mindful training in stress reduction for mental health professionals in Singapore (Suyi, Meredith & Khan, 2017).

Reducing stress and improving metacognitive processes also contributes to better emotional regulation, thus facilitating better sleep quality (Chiesa et al., 2011; Zeidan et al., 2010).. By breaking up cycles of rumination and worry, mindfulness is hypothesized to reduce "verbal overregulation" and facilitate the disengagement necessary to fall asleep (Gross et al., 2011). Mindfulness programs have been found to improve sleep quality in both healthy individuals (Lazar et al., 2000) and patients with medical or psychiatric illness, including insomnia and depression (Carlson & Garland, 2005; Heidenreich et al., 2006).

While there is much documentation supporting the efficacy of mindfulness training on stress and sleep, there is little research that attempts to evaluate the interpersonal differences or factors that predict the efficacy of mindfulness training on sleep and stress. Isolating these predictive variables consequently allows a better way to evaluate suitability of the mindfulness intervention on an individual basis; maximizing the results for the individual. With this new information, individuals suffering from stress and bad sleep would be able to better be able to select the most effective intervention.

While the concepts above have often been explored in relation to mindfulness, no studies to date have used machine learning to assess how these variables predispose an individual to benefit from mindfulness training. Generating this algorithm will allow for the prediction of treatment response in future trainees. Further, a better understanding of the effect of individual differences on efficacy can open the door for future research to examine how and why these differing results exist and incorporate this information to increase the effectiveness of mindfulness training.

Participants signing up for the 4 or 8 weeks mindfulness training courses at the Brahm Centre and run by Potential Project (two external organization providing Mindfulness based courses) will be automatically sent a link to the questionnaire packet several days after course enrolment. Participants will be provided with a survey link in the enrolment email that is sent to participants to confirm their enrolment, separate recruitment e-mails will not be sent out.