Mindfulness Based Interventions to Address Mental Health Issues

What is mindfulness?
In simplest terms, mindfulness is the state of mind in which we can choose to either be fully aware of ourselves, our thoughts and our surroundings at once, or to focus our awareness on any one of these at a given time.
Parents tend to have a lot going on throughout a given day and as a result, have a lot of thoughts running through your mind. If you’re honest with yourself, a good amount of the time, you tend to let these thoughts to have a great deal of control over emotions, words, and actions.
When we cultivate a state of mindfulness, this helps up to notice these un-useful thoughts, turn off the negative thoughts, and turn our attention back to what is most important.
In a clinical setting, most mindfulness meditation–based interventions have been used to treat stress, anxiety, and numerous mental health diagnoses.
Does it work?
Mindfulness based interventions are a popular way of attempting to improve the mental and physical health outcomes of children, adolescents, and adults. Many studies advocate the use of mindfulness for improving mental health people. Evidence supports that mindfulness meditation may improve functioning in positive and negative affective systems, including increased emotion awareness, altered emotional reactivity, exposure and extinction, and facilitation of cognitive reappraisal.
Properly designed and delivered mindfulness meditation can perform comparably to established treatments for symptoms of depression, anxiety, pain, substance use, posttraumatic stress, and serious mental illness. Studies have found a vast improvement in executive functioning, attention, and negative behaviors following mindfulness meditation.
A recent study investigated whether mindfulness moderated the relationship between fatigue and depressive symptoms in mothers of young children. Results showed that mindfulness did in fact lower fatigue and depressive symptoms. These studies reinforce the promise of using mindfulness-based interventions for improving the mental health and wellbeing of youth and adults alike.

Contact me for a free copy of a mindfulness meditation. Interested in exploring mindfulness meditation and finding out how it can help you? Send me an email or give me a call!