Mindfulness, mental health and emotion regulation among workers

Abstract

Few studies have been conducted to examine the relationship between mindfulness training and emotion regulation at work. This study reports results from a semi-randomized controlled trial of a brief Mindfulness-Based Intervention (MBI) (Grégoire & Lachance, 2015) delivered in audio format. A pretest-posttest switching-replication design was used to assess changes in mindfulness, mental health (psychological wellbeing, psychological distress, stress and burnout) and emotion regulation (emotion awareness and impulse control) among forty-one (N = 41) employees working in a call center. Data was collected using self-report questionnaires at baseline (t1), week 6 (t2), week 11 (t3) and week 25 (t4) in order to have a follow-up measure. Both the analysis of variance and the prediction analysis showed that the intervention helped increased mindfulness and psychological wellbeing, but also reduced psychological distress, stress and burnout among employees. Overall, the intervention helped employees refrain from impulsive or reactive behavior when experiencing negative emotions but had no significant effect on their emotional awareness. Finally, there was a trend toward emotion regulation mediating the effects of the intervention on psychological distress.