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Mental health and mindfulness amongst Australian fire fighters

BACKGROUND: While extensive research has highlighted the positive mental health outcomes associated with mindfulness, little work has examined how mindfulness may protect the mental health of first responders exposed to trauma. This is important as there is increasing evidence that mindfulness skill...

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Autores principales: Counson, Isabelle, Hosemans, Dominic, Lal, Tara J., Mott, Brendan, Harvey, Samuel B., Joyce, Sadhbh
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6570940/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31200776
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40359-019-0311-2
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author Counson, Isabelle
Hosemans, Dominic
Lal, Tara J.
Mott, Brendan
Harvey, Samuel B.
Joyce, Sadhbh
author_facet Counson, Isabelle
Hosemans, Dominic
Lal, Tara J.
Mott, Brendan
Harvey, Samuel B.
Joyce, Sadhbh
author_sort Counson, Isabelle
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: While extensive research has highlighted the positive mental health outcomes associated with mindfulness, little work has examined how mindfulness may protect the mental health of first responders exposed to trauma. This is important as there is increasing evidence that mindfulness skills, if protective, can be taught to groups of at-risk workers. The purpose of the current research was to examine the potential role mindfulness may have in supporting the mental health of Australian fire fighters. METHODS: The sample consisted of 114 professional fire fighters who completed demographic and job-related questions followed by measures of mindfulness (FMI-14), well-being (WHO-5), depression (HADS-D) and anxiety (HADS-A). Hierarchical multiple linear regressions were performed to determine whether levels of mindfulness were associated with anxiety, depression and wellbeing after accounting for age and number of years of fire service. RESULTS: High levels of mindfulness were associated with decreased depression (p ≤ .001) and anxiety (p ≤ .001) as well as increased psychological well-being (p ≤ .001). Measures of mindfulness were able to explain a substantial amount of the variability in well-being (26.8%), anxiety (23.6%) and depression (22.4%), regardless of age and years of fire service. CONCLUSIONS: The present study provides evidence for robust associations between dispositional mindfulness and mental health markers of depression, anxiety and well-being in Australian fire fighters recently exposed to trauma. Mindfulness is a psychological characteristic that may be able to be modified, although further research is required to substantiate these findings and to formally test mindfulness interventions. Such studies would allow greater insight into the underlying mechanisms through which mindfulness may exert its beneficial effects. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s40359-019-0311-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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spelling pubmed-65709402019-06-20 Mental health and mindfulness amongst Australian fire fighters Counson, Isabelle Hosemans, Dominic Lal, Tara J. Mott, Brendan Harvey, Samuel B. Joyce, Sadhbh BMC Psychol Research Article BACKGROUND: While extensive research has highlighted the positive mental health outcomes associated with mindfulness, little work has examined how mindfulness may protect the mental health of first responders exposed to trauma. This is important as there is increasing evidence that mindfulness skills, if protective, can be taught to groups of at-risk workers. The purpose of the current research was to examine the potential role mindfulness may have in supporting the mental health of Australian fire fighters. METHODS: The sample consisted of 114 professional fire fighters who completed demographic and job-related questions followed by measures of mindfulness (FMI-14), well-being (WHO-5), depression (HADS-D) and anxiety (HADS-A). Hierarchical multiple linear regressions were performed to determine whether levels of mindfulness were associated with anxiety, depression and wellbeing after accounting for age and number of years of fire service. RESULTS: High levels of mindfulness were associated with decreased depression (p ≤ .001) and anxiety (p ≤ .001) as well as increased psychological well-being (p ≤ .001). Measures of mindfulness were able to explain a substantial amount of the variability in well-being (26.8%), anxiety (23.6%) and depression (22.4%), regardless of age and years of fire service. CONCLUSIONS: The present study provides evidence for robust associations between dispositional mindfulness and mental health markers of depression, anxiety and well-being in Australian fire fighters recently exposed to trauma. Mindfulness is a psychological characteristic that may be able to be modified, although further research is required to substantiate these findings and to formally test mindfulness interventions. Such studies would allow greater insight into the underlying mechanisms through which mindfulness may exert its beneficial effects. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s40359-019-0311-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. BioMed Central 2019-06-14 /pmc/articles/PMC6570940/ /pubmed/31200776 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40359-019-0311-2 Text en © The Author(s). 2019 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research Article
Counson, Isabelle
Hosemans, Dominic
Lal, Tara J.
Mott, Brendan
Harvey, Samuel B.
Joyce, Sadhbh
Mental health and mindfulness amongst Australian fire fighters
title Mental health and mindfulness amongst Australian fire fighters
title_full Mental health and mindfulness amongst Australian fire fighters
title_fullStr Mental health and mindfulness amongst Australian fire fighters
title_full_unstemmed Mental health and mindfulness amongst Australian fire fighters
title_short Mental health and mindfulness amongst Australian fire fighters
title_sort mental health and mindfulness amongst australian fire fighters
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6570940/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31200776
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40359-019-0311-2
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