NCT05051969

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction for Metro Nashville Public School Employees

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 37 (actual)
• Sponsor: Vanderbilt University Medical Center · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

Stress, anxiety, and depression are common symptoms among public school teachers. Public school teachers are among the top professions reporting stress, anxiety, and depression. The causes are multifactorial and include work-related demands, challenges with students, limited resources, and compassion fatigue. Because of this, teachers are at risk of burnout and leaving or changing their profession. The COVID-19 pandemic has had a considerable impact on teachers due to disruptions in usual education delivery and ability to support students. Recent reports show poorer mental health and decreases in physical activity in teachers since the onset of the pandemic. Effective and implementable strategies are urgently needed to address poor mental health and to foster positive health characteristics in this population. Mindfulness programs decrease feelings of stress, anxiety, and emotional exhaustion. Additionally, mindfulness can improve self-compassion, which may be an important mediating factor in a teacher population. Prior work has shown an inverse relationship between self-compassion and burnout. Currently, there are few studies investigating whether building self-compassion can reduce burnout in public school teachers. The investigators will explore therelationship between participation in a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course and changes in burnout, self-compassion, and other whole person health measures in an educator population. The overall objective of this open pilot study is to examine the feasibility and acceptability of an 8-week remote, group-based MBSR program delivered over Zoom for Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) personnel reporting elevated stress, anxiety, and/or depressive symptoms. Our pilot study results will contribute to the evidence on MBSR in a public-school employee population and inform strategies to optimize implementation of our remote MBSR program within the Vanderbilt Health at MNPS system.

Conditions

• Self-compassion
• Burnout
• Stress
• Anxiety
• Depression

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	Remote Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program	Enrolled participants will participate in a remote-delivered (online with audio and video) Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program. MBSR is a well established behavioral health intervention consisting of 10-sessions lasting 2.5 hours, with one session lasting 7.5 hours in an all-day retreat format over a 2-month period.

Timeline

• Start date: 2022-07-01
• Primary completion: 2023-01-05
• Completion: 2023-01-05
• First posted: 2021-09-21
• Last updated: 2023-02-08

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United States