Cargando…

Association Between Improvement in Baseline Mood and Long-Term Use of a Mindfulness and Meditation App: Observational Study

BACKGROUND: The use of smartphone apps to monitor and deliver health care guidance and interventions has received considerable attention recently, particularly with regard to behavioral disorders, stress relief, negative emotional state, and poor mood in general. Unfortunately, there is little resea...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Athanas, Argus J, McCorrison, Jamison M, Smalley, Susan, Price, Jamie, Grady, Jim, Wehner, Paul, Campistron, Julie, Schork, Nicholas J
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: JMIR Publications 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6707590/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31066704
http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/12617
_version_ 1783445881412911104
author Athanas, Argus J
McCorrison, Jamison M
Smalley, Susan
Price, Jamie
Grady, Jim
Wehner, Paul
Campistron, Julie
Schork, Nicholas J
author_facet Athanas, Argus J
McCorrison, Jamison M
Smalley, Susan
Price, Jamie
Grady, Jim
Wehner, Paul
Campistron, Julie
Schork, Nicholas J
author_sort Athanas, Argus J
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: The use of smartphone apps to monitor and deliver health care guidance and interventions has received considerable attention recently, particularly with regard to behavioral disorders, stress relief, negative emotional state, and poor mood in general. Unfortunately, there is little research investigating the long-term and repeated effects of apps meant to impact mood and emotional state. OBJECTIVE: We aimed to investigate the effects of both immediate point-of-intervention and long-term use (ie, at least 10 engagements) of a guided meditation and mindfulness smartphone app on users’ emotional states. Data were collected from users of a mobile phone app developed by the company Stop, Breathe & Think (SBT) for achieving emotional wellness. To explore the long-term effects, we assessed changes in the users’ basal emotional state before they completed an activity (eg, a guided meditation). We also assessed the immediate effects of the app on users’ emotional states from preactivity to postactivity. METHODS: The SBT app collects information on the emotional state of the user before and after engagement in one or several mediation and mindfulness activities. These activities are recommended and provided by the app based on user input. We considered data on over 120,000 users of the app who collectively engaged in over 5.5 million sessions with the app during an approximate 2-year period. We focused our analysis on users who had at least 10 engagements with the app over an average of 6 months. We explored the changes in the emotional well-being of individuals with different emotional states at the time of their initial engagement with the app using mixed-effects models. In the process, we compared 2 different methods of classifying emotional states: (1) an expert-defined a priori mood classification and (2) an empirically driven cluster-based classification. RESULTS: We found that among long-term users of the app, there was an association between the length of use and a positive change in basal emotional state (4% positive mood increase on a 2-point scale every 10 sessions). We also found that individuals who were anxious or depressed tended to have a favorable long-term emotional transition (eg, from a sad emotional state to a happier emotional state) after using the app for an extended period (the odds ratio for achieving a positive emotional state was 3.2 and 6.2 for anxious and depressed individuals, respectively, compared with users with fewer sessions). CONCLUSIONS: Our analyses provide evidence for an association between both immediate and long-term use of an app providing guided meditations and improvements in the emotional state.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-6707590
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2019
publisher JMIR Publications
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-67075902019-11-18 Association Between Improvement in Baseline Mood and Long-Term Use of a Mindfulness and Meditation App: Observational Study Athanas, Argus J McCorrison, Jamison M Smalley, Susan Price, Jamie Grady, Jim Wehner, Paul Campistron, Julie Schork, Nicholas J JMIR Ment Health Original Paper BACKGROUND: The use of smartphone apps to monitor and deliver health care guidance and interventions has received considerable attention recently, particularly with regard to behavioral disorders, stress relief, negative emotional state, and poor mood in general. Unfortunately, there is little research investigating the long-term and repeated effects of apps meant to impact mood and emotional state. OBJECTIVE: We aimed to investigate the effects of both immediate point-of-intervention and long-term use (ie, at least 10 engagements) of a guided meditation and mindfulness smartphone app on users’ emotional states. Data were collected from users of a mobile phone app developed by the company Stop, Breathe & Think (SBT) for achieving emotional wellness. To explore the long-term effects, we assessed changes in the users’ basal emotional state before they completed an activity (eg, a guided meditation). We also assessed the immediate effects of the app on users’ emotional states from preactivity to postactivity. METHODS: The SBT app collects information on the emotional state of the user before and after engagement in one or several mediation and mindfulness activities. These activities are recommended and provided by the app based on user input. We considered data on over 120,000 users of the app who collectively engaged in over 5.5 million sessions with the app during an approximate 2-year period. We focused our analysis on users who had at least 10 engagements with the app over an average of 6 months. We explored the changes in the emotional well-being of individuals with different emotional states at the time of their initial engagement with the app using mixed-effects models. In the process, we compared 2 different methods of classifying emotional states: (1) an expert-defined a priori mood classification and (2) an empirically driven cluster-based classification. RESULTS: We found that among long-term users of the app, there was an association between the length of use and a positive change in basal emotional state (4% positive mood increase on a 2-point scale every 10 sessions). We also found that individuals who were anxious or depressed tended to have a favorable long-term emotional transition (eg, from a sad emotional state to a happier emotional state) after using the app for an extended period (the odds ratio for achieving a positive emotional state was 3.2 and 6.2 for anxious and depressed individuals, respectively, compared with users with fewer sessions). CONCLUSIONS: Our analyses provide evidence for an association between both immediate and long-term use of an app providing guided meditations and improvements in the emotional state. JMIR Publications 2019-05-08 /pmc/articles/PMC6707590/ /pubmed/31066704 http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/12617 Text en ©Argus J Athanas, Jamison M McCorrison, Susan Smalley, Jamie Price, Jim Grady, Paul Wehner, Julie Campistron, Nicholas J Schork. Originally published in JMIR Mental Health (https://mental.jmir.org), 08.05.2019. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in JMIR Mental Health, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on http://mental.jmir.org/, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.
spellingShingle Original Paper
Athanas, Argus J
McCorrison, Jamison M
Smalley, Susan
Price, Jamie
Grady, Jim
Wehner, Paul
Campistron, Julie
Schork, Nicholas J
Association Between Improvement in Baseline Mood and Long-Term Use of a Mindfulness and Meditation App: Observational Study
title Association Between Improvement in Baseline Mood and Long-Term Use of a Mindfulness and Meditation App: Observational Study
title_full Association Between Improvement in Baseline Mood and Long-Term Use of a Mindfulness and Meditation App: Observational Study
title_fullStr Association Between Improvement in Baseline Mood and Long-Term Use of a Mindfulness and Meditation App: Observational Study
title_full_unstemmed Association Between Improvement in Baseline Mood and Long-Term Use of a Mindfulness and Meditation App: Observational Study
title_short Association Between Improvement in Baseline Mood and Long-Term Use of a Mindfulness and Meditation App: Observational Study
title_sort association between improvement in baseline mood and long-term use of a mindfulness and meditation app: observational study
topic Original Paper
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6707590/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31066704
http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/12617
work_keys_str_mv AT athanasargusj associationbetweenimprovementinbaselinemoodandlongtermuseofamindfulnessandmeditationappobservationalstudy
AT mccorrisonjamisonm associationbetweenimprovementinbaselinemoodandlongtermuseofamindfulnessandmeditationappobservationalstudy
AT smalleysusan associationbetweenimprovementinbaselinemoodandlongtermuseofamindfulnessandmeditationappobservationalstudy
AT pricejamie associationbetweenimprovementinbaselinemoodandlongtermuseofamindfulnessandmeditationappobservationalstudy
AT gradyjim associationbetweenimprovementinbaselinemoodandlongtermuseofamindfulnessandmeditationappobservationalstudy
AT wehnerpaul associationbetweenimprovementinbaselinemoodandlongtermuseofamindfulnessandmeditationappobservationalstudy
AT campistronjulie associationbetweenimprovementinbaselinemoodandlongtermuseofamindfulnessandmeditationappobservationalstudy
AT schorknicholasj associationbetweenimprovementinbaselinemoodandlongtermuseofamindfulnessandmeditationappobservationalstudy