Background: Chronic pain (CP) is a complex and prevalent public health condition that significantly impacts physical functioning, psychological well-being, and quality of life. Traditional biomedical treatments often provide limited relief, highlighting the need for integrative approaches. Biopsychosocial interventions, such as mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), have shown promise in...
JMIR Formative ResearchSeptember 22, 2026Ruya Akdag, Anja Van der Voort, Lisa Tessensohn et al.
Many adolescents experience elevated stress and anxiety; yet, access to effective psychological support is limited. Brief digital mental health interventions, such as slow breathing (SB) and detached mindfulness (DM), offer a potentially scalable approach to promoting emotion regulation in daily life. This study aimed to investigate whether 1 week of daily practice with a SB or DM intervention...
Sense of agency (SoA) is the subjective experience of controlling one's actions and their effects in the world. SoA is important for behavioral change and goal achievement, and its measurement via digital devices has gained attention in health promotion and therapeutic interventions. This study describes longitudinal changes and individual variations in general explicit sense of agency...
Adolescent anxiety is a growing public health concern associated with significant social and emotional impairment. Mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) have shown promise in reducing anxiety and improving well-being; however, engagement remains challenging. Virtual reality (VR)-based delivery may enhance immersion and attention, potentially addressing barriers of traditional mindfulness...
Background: Population aging is driving a rapid rise in dementia cases worldwide, posing a major challenge for health care systems around the globe, including in the Netherlands. Digital multidomain lifestyle interventions, which target multiple lifestyle domains simultaneously, can protect against cognitive decline in at-risk older adults but struggle to sustain engagement. Addressing stress...
Background: Wellness tourism increasingly incorporates short yoga sessions for stress management, yet evidence on their immediate physiological and emotional responses remains limited. Objective: This exploratory pilot study aimed to generate preliminary data on acute physiological and emotional responses to a single 24-minute yoga session (breathing, postures, and meditation) compared with...
Background: Depression in children is a concerning societal issue and can be associated with poor academic performance, school dropout, and poor overall quality of life. Additionally, child depression is often associated with parallel stress and depression in parents. Objective: This scenario highlights the urgent need for the development and implementation of accessible and scalable solutions...
While mindfulness meditation (MM) apps have gained popularity as a tool for promoting sleep, research focusing on bedtime mindfulness practice and app usage is limited. As the first step toward understanding the efficacy and mechanisms of such bedtime practice and to inform future investigations, the goal of this pilot study was to explore the feasibility of app-guided bedtime MM practice with...
JMIR Formative ResearchAugust 22, 2025Judith Borghouts, Elizabeth V Eikey, Cinthia De Leon et al.
BackgroundMindfulness-based apps can be an effective and accessible resource for mental health support. However, little is known about their use outside of research settings and what user characteristics relate to app use. ObjectiveThis study aimed to examine the characteristics of people who decided to use, not use, or stop using Headspace within the context of a large-scale public deployment,...
Depression in children is a concerning societal issue and can be associated with poor academic performance, school dropout, and poor overall quality of life. Additionally, child depression is often associated with parallel stress and depression in parents. This scenario highlights the urgent need for the development and implementation of accessible and scalable solutions that may cobenefit...
JMIR Formative ResearchJune 11, 2025Tovan Lew, Natnaiel M Dubale, Erik Doose et al.3 citations
Undergraduate students frequently experience negative emotional states and sleep quality, which is believed to have worsened following the COVID-19 pandemic. This study piloted the use of a popular mobile mindfulness app (Calm) as a potential intervention to improve state depression, anxiety, stress, and sleep quality in undergraduate students attending a Canadian university, following the...
JMIR Formative ResearchMarch 11, 2025Mollie R Cummins, Julia Ivanova, Hiral Soni et al.3 citations
In the postpandemic era, telemedicine continues to enable mental health care access for many people, especially persons living in areas with mental health care provider shortages. However, as lawmakers consider long-term telemedicine policy decisions, some question the safety and appropriateness of prescribing via telemedicine, and whether there should be requirements for in-person evaluation,...
Physician burnout is widespread in health care systems, with harmful consequences on physicians, patients, and health care organizations. Mindfulness training (MT) has proven effective in reducing burnout; however, its time-consuming requirements often pose challenges for physicians who are already struggling with their busy schedules. This study aimed to design a short and pragmatic digital MT...
JMIR Formative ResearchJanuary 17, 2025Silvia Rizzi, Maria Chiara Pavesi, Alessia Moser et al.
BackgroundPregnancy is a complex period characterized by significant transformations. How a woman adapts to these changes can affect her quality of life and psychological well-being. Recently developed digital solutions have assumed a crucial role in supporting the psychological well-being of pregnant women. However, these tools have mainly been developed for women who already present...
JMIR Formative ResearchDecember 3, 2024Mary L Peng, Joan Monin, Polina Ovchinnikova et al.4 citations
Psychedelic art (PA) emerged in the 1960s during the psychedelic era; then characterized by visuals induced by the ingestion of psychedelic drugs, it is now an art form known for its vibrant colors, distorted forms, and intricate patterns. Building upon the existing research on art viewing as an effective means to improving physiological and psychological well-being, viewing PA is postulated to...
JMIR Formative ResearchOctober 15, 2024Morghane Aubert, Céline Clavel, Christine Le Scanff et al.1 citation
Mindfulness improves well-being, improves emotional regulation, reduces impulses to eat, and is linked to increased physical activity. Mindfulness interventions usually focus on 1 aspect but do not offer an approach to holistically improving lifestyle. This study aims to address this gap by designing and evaluating a holistic mindfulness intervention. Committing to a 12-week intervention with...
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic inflammatory disease affecting the central nervous system, often leading to poor sleep quality and diminished quality of life (QoL) for affected patients. Sleep disturbances in MS do not always correlate linearly with other symptoms such as anxiety, depression, fatigue, or pain. Various approaches, including stress reduction techniques such as...
Individuals with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) experience cycles of aggressive physical symptoms including abdominal pain, diarrhea, and fatigue. These acute symptoms regress and return, and chronic symptoms and complications often linger. The nature of the disease can also cause individuals to experience psychological distress including symptoms of anxiety and depression; however, unlike...
This study demonstrates that changes in mindfulness predict subsequent changes in well-being in a data set including individuals who recently engaged in psychedelic use.
JMIR Formative ResearchJanuary 30, 2024Caeleigh A Landry, Hugh C Mccall, Janine D Beahm et al.7 citations
Public safety personnel (PSP) are individuals who work to ensure the safety and security of communities (eg, correctional workers, firefighters, paramedics, and police officers). PSP have a high risk of developing mental disorders and face unique barriers to traditional mental health treatments. The PSP Wellbeing Course is a transdiagnostic, internet-delivered cognitive behavioral therapy...
Background Psychedelic substances have demonstrated promise in the treatment of depression, anxiety, and substance use disorders. Significant media coverage has been dedicated to psychedelic medicine, but it is unclear whether the public associates psilocybin with its potential therapeutic benefits. The COVID-19 pandemic led to an increase in depression, anxiety, and substance abuse in the...
Race-based anxiety is a critical health issue within the Black community. Mindfulness interventions hold promise for treating race-based anxiety in Black Americans; however, there are many barriers that prevent Black Americans from using these treatments, such as low cultural relevance, significant time burdens, and excessive costs. This study is a replication and extension of findings that...
Background Effective symptom management is crucial to enhancing the quality of life for individuals with chronic diseases. Health care has changed markedly over the past decade as immersive, stand-alone, and wearable technologies including virtual reality have become available. One chronic pain population that could benefit from such an intervention is individuals with rheumatoid arthritis...
JMIR Formative ResearchOctober 9, 2023Tori Humiston, Caroline Cummings, Stephen J. Suss et al.8 citations
BACKGROUND: Diabetes distress among adolescents with type 1 diabetes has been associated with suboptimal diabetes outcomes, including lower quality of life, increased diabetes self-management challenges, and suboptimal glycemic outcomes. OBJECTIVE: This study examined the feasibility and acceptability of a scalable self-led mindfulness-based intervention to reduce diabetes distress in...
Background: Psychological distress is prevalent among university students. However, the availability of evidence-based mental health treatment remains limited in many low- and middle-income countries, including Indonesia. Internet-delivered, mindfulness-based interventions that reduce distress have potential for treating university student distress at scale. Unfortunately, evidence-based,...