Effects of a brief mindfulness-based intervention program for stress management among medical students: the Mindful-Gym randomized controlled study

Pursuing undergraduate medical training can be very stressful and academically challenging experience. A 5-week mindfulness-based stress management (MBSM/Mindful-Gym) program was developed to help medical students cope with stress. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention in reducing stress among students in a medical school in Malaysia. Seventy-five medical students participated in the program. They were stratified according to years of studies and randomly allocated to intervention ( N = 37) and control groups ( N = 38). The following outcome variables were measured at pre- and post-intervention: mindfulness (with Mindful Awareness Attention Scale); perceived stress (with Perceived Stress Scale); mental distress (with General Health Questionnaire), and self-efficacy (with General Self-efficacy Scale). Hierarchical multiple regressions were used to analyse the effect of group (intervention vs. control) on changes in the outcome variables. There were significant improvements at one week post-intervention in all outcome variables: mindfulness (β = 0.19, ΔR2 = 0.04, p = .040, f 2 = 0.05), perceived stress (β = −0.26, ΔR2 = 0.07, p = .009, f 2 = 0.10); mental distress (β = −0.28, ΔR2 = 0.10, p = .003, f 2 = 0.15); and self-efficacy (β = 0.30, ΔR2 = 0.09, p