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Mental health promotion in the Internet age: a consultation with Australian young people to inform the design of an online mindfulness training programme

Kaveh Monshat, Dianne Vella‐brodrick, Jane Burns, Helen Herrman

Health Promotion International March 11, 2011 DOI: 10.1093/heapro/dar017 (opens in new tab)

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Study at a glance

AI-extracted from the abstract
Characteristics Qualitative study Peer reviewed
Sample size 13
Population Young people aged 16-26 recruited through online advertising
Topics Meditation
Citations 42
Key findings Young people were eager to engage in designing the programme and provided valuable input on structure, content, evaluation, and engagement strategies. All interviewees believed young people would find the programme desirable, leading to the MATE programme.

Abstract

Mindfulness training (MT) has been shown to lead to significant improvements in psychological distress and emotion regulation skills. The Internet has many advantages as a medium for building emotional skills in young people. The aim of this study was to involve young people in designing an online MT programme. A draft programme was initially designed based on a review of the literature and an established face-to-face programme for medical students. Twenty young people were then recruited through online advertising and 13 (age 16-26) interviewed. They were asked to comment on how useful, easy to use and enjoyable they found the proposed programme and how the draft version and its planned evaluation strategy could be improved. Interviewee responses were independently processed by two of the authors within a qualitative thematic analysis paradigm. The results showed that young people were eager to engage with the design of this health promotion programme and provided valuable input. All interviewees believed that young people would find the programme desirable. They provided a variety of suggestions about how training structure and content could be improved, how best it could be evaluated and how young people could be encouraged to engage with and complete the programme. It thus appears that online MT is a feasible mental health promotion strategy for young people and that it can be evaluated in a controlled trial. The result of this consultation process was the Mindful Awareness Training and Education (MATE) programme, which has been detailed.

Comparable studies

Other qualitative studies on meditation, most cited first.

Study Year Design Participants
The varieties of contemplative experience: A mixed-methods study of meditation-related challenges in Western Buddhists Western Buddhist meditation practitioners and experts in Theravāda, Zen, and Tibetan... 2017 Qualitative study with mixed-methods
The Effects of Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction on Nurse Stress and Burnout Nurses in a hospital system 2004 Implementation study with mixed methods
An exploratory mixed methods study of the acceptability and effectiveness of mindfulness -based cognitive therapy for patients with active depression and anxiety in primary care Primary care patients with recurrent depression or recurrent depression and anxiety 2006 Exploratory mixed methods study n = 13
A qualitative study of mindfulness‐based cognitive therapy for depression Participants in mindfulness-based cognitive therapy in a mental-health context 2001 Qualitative study n = 7
Effortless awareness: using real time neurofeedback to investigate correlates of posterior cingulate cortex activity in meditators' self-report Meditators 2013 Qualitative study using grounded theory methodology

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