Research shows that brief mindfulness training can

Teaching patients basic mindfulness skills can make a big difference.

Today’s deluge of information requires careful scrutiny and sifting. Especially in the medical field, the sheer volume of new studies and reviews can be overwhelming. We do our best to sift through the mountains of information, dig through the rough edges, and find buried treasure. But sometimes the treasure is just there in plain sight. I stumbled across a recent example of this in a study of a short-term mindfulness intervention. The study reported purportedly failed indicators of the benefits of mindfulness, yet buried in the details was strong evidence for including basic mindfulness training in patients’ treatment plans.

The research paper in question investigated the effectiveness of a single-session mindfulness-based intervention. Its primary objective was to evaluate the improvement in subjects’ “levels of loneliness” after they participated in a one-hour manualized telehealth intervention. The intervention included both basic meditation exercises and the same exercises combined with additional exercises, including loving-kindness meditation (a wait-listed control group, no intervention). The structured one-hour intervention model included a brief conceptual education on mindfulness, introductory tactics for breathing meditation, identification of subjective feelings (including recognition of “lonelyness”), and an additional module of loving-kindness meditation for some subjects, who were then asked to practice it daily (no assessment was made as to whether the instructions were followed).

Measures measured one and two weeks after the intervention focused primarily on self-reported loneliness. Results showed that the compassion component “significantly reduced perceived stress, anxiety, and depression, but not loneliness.” In my view, the discussion section seemed to lament the lack of impact on perceived loneliness, as the intervention was supposedly created to address the concurrent pandemic of loneliness reported during the worst of COVID-19.

But for me, while the needle in the haystack of focus did not budge, the authors did not seem to give the diamond in the rough enough credit. Just one guided meditation session resulted in “significant reductions in perceived stress, anxiety, and depression” in two weeks. This is not sitting for years, nor is it the well-regarded MBSR protocol, which in most cases takes eight weeks or more. The specific intervention treatment manual can be found here (thanks to Dr. Mikael Rubin for creating this easy-to-follow intervention and for allowing me to link it). Of course, there are many other sources for brief mindfulness training for patients in medical settings. This training, as shown, helps in the short term, and when reinforced with regular practice, improves results.

There may be no cure for loneliness other than actual human connection, but with or without a pandemic, thoughtful, time-effective strategies for working with patients on mindfulness can help them adapt to loneliness and other stressful conditions.

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