Developing a prognostic model for stress reduction in patients with prolonged work‐related stress

Mindfulness‐based stress reduction (MBSR) is a 9‐session group‐treatment programme for managing stress. Research suggests variability in the outcomes of MBSR among participants. This prognostic (not causal) study develops a multivariable model that may support clinicians in forecasting expected MBSR outcomes. We used data of 763 patients collected from MBSR programs conducted between October 2015 and March 2022. Candidate prognostic factors at baseline included psychosocial work environment, sociodemographic, and clinical information. Multiple imputation was used to handle missing data (imputations = 200). Important prognostic factors were backward selected in ≥5% of the imputed datasets. The final prediction model including the selected prognostic factors was evaluated using linear regression with a four‐fold internal cross‐validation procedure. Reductions in perceived stress from baseline to end of the MBSR programme were predicted by a lower General Severity Index (β = 2.00, p