In the weeks leading up to the second annual IAPT and eHealth Summit , we’ll be sharing with you a series of guest blogs from our online therapy partners. Today, we hear from Richard Latham, CEO of Wellmind Media on recent research regarding the efficacy of online mindfulness training, and specifically Wellmind Media’s course, Be Mindful.
It’s great to see so many IAPT services providing Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) to their service users in teacher-led groups. I guess this should come as no surprise. There is an outstanding evidence base, established over many years, which validates the efficacy of MBCT when it is delivered in this way and used to treat anxiety and recurrent depression.
But there’s a catch: mindfulness takes time and commitment to master. There’s no quick solution to learning mindfulness – it’s really not complicated and anyone can do it, but like any new skill, it takes practice to make it a natural aspect of daily life. For IAPT services, the big challenge is that to be effective, MBCT requires someone to attend multiple sessions and to practice mindfulness in a time-structured format over at least a month. Unsurprisingly, many IAPT service users find it difficult to attend the sessions and often forget to carry out their mindfulness assignments and practices at home.
Online delivery of MBCT would obviously mitigate these problems, but would its efficacy be reduced due to the loss of real world interaction with a teacher and the group? Not so, according to published research on the outcomes for participants completing Be Mindful, the online course that we run in partnership with the Mental Health Foundation, which delivers all the elements of MBCT over the web and via email.
The effectiveness of the Be Mindful online course was the subject of a significant research study by the Department of Psychiatry, Oxford University and published in BMJ Open. The reported average outcomes for completers of the online MBCT course show participants enjoying reductions of 58% in anxiety (GAD7), 57% in depression (PHQ9) and 40% in stress (PSS). These reductions were found at a one month follow up after course completion, which revealed a further drop in levels of stress, anxiety and depression from course completion, signifying that the Be Mindful course achieves lasting benefits. It was concluded that online mindfulness training, specifically the Be Mindful course, is as good as, if not better than face-to-face mindfulness training.
We’re seeing similar average outcomes to the Oxford University study for IAPT service users completing the Be Mindful course. Namely, the IAPT service of Rotherham, Doncaster and South Humber NHS Foundation Trust (RDaSH) who are also reporting a reliable improvement of 67% for course participants.
Even with highly engaging online programmes, it’s unlikely that we’ll ever overcome all the challenges to help course participants find the time and commitment to carry out all that’s required with MBCT. However, we’ve certainly made it easier for people to complete the MBCT course and therefore to enjoy the lasting benefits that mindfulness practice brings. Interestingly, there seems to be something about learning mindfulness online with a computer program that actually increases the effectiveness of MBCT and makes up for the loss of the real world dynamic of the teacher-led group.
I’ll be exploring this topic during my presentation at the IAPT and eHealth summit in November, and sharing more published research on the efficacy of online mental health training.
About Wellmind Media
Wellmind Media is an online mental health training company established in Brighton in 2002, with a mission to work with expert partners running engaging, informative, enjoyable, and effective online training programmes that help and empower participants to manage their own mental and physical wellbeing.
