Mindfulness is a cure for our distraction-filled lives

Mindfulness is not a cure all for all modern problem but it is a good place to start, argues Justin Thomas

Is mindfulness the perfect antidote to our distraction-filled lives? Delores Johnson / The National

Every few decades a new form of psychological therapy bursts on to the scene. This goes back to the latter part of the 19th century when Sigmund Freud began peddling psychoanalysis. By the 1950s, behaviour therapy became all the rage. Next came the self-esteem movement and the person-centred approaches were born, closely followed by the, still very popular, cognitive therapies.

However, since the 1990s a new approach has been gaining ground. This new intervention, the latest in a fairly short line of superstar psychotherapies, is known as mindfulness. Some people now even speak of the "mindfulness revolution". Type the word "mindfulness" into Google trends and you will see that between 2009 and 2015 the number of searches made for that term increased by more than 400 per cent.

A recent article, published in the American Psychiatric Journal, details a new mindfulness programme specifically developed for the US military. Within education too, many schools and colleges have integrated mindfulness into the curriculum and subsequently reported improvements in academic performance as well as emotional well-being. Part of the broader appeal of mindfulness is that it isn't just about helping people become well (therapy), it's also about keeping them well (resilience) and raising well-being to new heights (flourishing).

Mindfulness isn't a singular entity. There are numerous mindfulness-based approaches: dialectical behaviour therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy and the more widely known mindfulness-based stress reduction, to mention just three. All of these approaches, very different in some respects, also share common elements. One of the important shared elements is helping us develop our capacity for paying attention to present moment experience, with an attitude of detached curiosity and acceptance. Easy to say, but difficult to do. The usual means of helping people cultivate this new relationship to experience is through some form of meditation.

The central ideas and many of the practices within mindfulness are derived from eastern spiritual traditions. Even though, in its therapeutic form, mindfulness is detached from its religious roots, it is hard to talk about it without sounding a little bit like Yoda from Star Wars – let the thoughts go, you must.

For some people, especially those from the West, this "other worldliness" is part of the appeal. However, the biggest contributor to the success of mindfulness-based approaches has to be the fact that they work. Study after study reveals beneficial outcomes. One important finding is that mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT – another member of the mindfulness clan) is the most effective way to reduce the rates of depressive relapse for people who have already had episodes of depression. MBCT is more effective than taking anti depressant medication for life.

Our own research team at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi recently ran a study exploring the effectiveness of a mindfulness-based stress reduction programme on the emotional well-being of undergraduate students. The results were overwhelmingly positive, with programme participants showing improvements on all stress measures in comparison with control group participants.

The cultivation of mindfulness is more than a fad: it has thousands of years on the clock and it will be around for a long time after the media attention subsides.

That said, anything that becomes popular is in danger of being distorted, adulterated and consumed as if it were junk food. Mindfulness is not the cure-all that some of the surrounding hype might suggest. It is, however, for many people, a fairly simple and inexpensive means to personal growth and improved physical and psychological well-being.

Justin Thomas is an associate professor of psychology at Zayed University and author of Psychological Well-Being in the Gulf States

On Twitter: @DrJustinThomas