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Mindfulness and Healthcare-Induced Anxiety Among College Students
by Praneetha Inampudi
Faculty Advisor: Jasper Smits, PhD
Anxiety in patients stemming from healthcare settings often leads to the avoidance of treatment. Such behavior can exacerbate pre-existing health conditions and cause physical harm by letting ailments go untreated. In order to combat this, numerous pharmacologic interventions such as sedation and general anesthesia have been studied. Although perceived loss of control has a proven role in causing mental distress among patients, behavioral interventions remain relatively unexplored. One approach that has been studied for decreasing the symptoms of generalized anxiety disorders in non-medical settings is the practice of mindfulness. In order to assess anxiety arising from medical environments, this study aims to identify if there is a relationship between the level of mindfulness in college students and their levels of healthcare-induced anxiety. Scores from the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire, Modified Dental Anxiety Scale, and State Trait Anxiety Inventory were compared among 218 undergraduate students at the University of Texas at Austin. Regression analyses suggested a significant negative relationship between mindfulness and healthcare-induced anxiety, but not between mindfulness and dental anxiety. Thus, mindfulness appears to play an important role in levels of anxiety in medical environments, but not in dental environments.