Brief Tele-Mindfulness Based Intervention: A Randomized Controlled Multicenter Trial

Abstract Background: To enhance psychological wellbeing of health care providers (HCP) who look after patients with COVID-19. This study is a psychological intervention in COVID-19 pandemic to check at what extent can interventions based on brief mindfulness-based interventions and progressive muscle relaxation affect psychological well-being, resilience, and anxiety of HCP. Methods: This is a randomized trial study that was conducted from July to August 2020. 147 COVID-19 frontline HCP were randomized to a 2-week virtual intervention with brief mindfulness-based intervention (MBI) or to progressive muscle relaxation(PMR). Pre and post intervention assessment were done using the (state trait anxiety–20 Item Scale), the (Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC-10), and WHO – 5 Well-Being Index. Results: The two groups had significant improvement results in the psychological wellbeing and reduction of the state anxiety but not the trait anxiety nor the resiliency. Improvement was higher among group brief mindfulness-based intervention (81.3%) than among group progressive muscle relaxation (51.8%), (X 2 =12.9, p=0.0001), concerning psychological wellbeing. Conclusions: Both brief mindfulness-based intervention and progressive muscle relaxation improved the psychological wellbeing and reduced the anxiety of frontline health care providers during COVID-19 pandemic with improvement being slightly higher among Brief mindfulness-based intervention. Trial registration : Clinicaltrial.gov identifier: NCT04656626 https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04656626?cond=Mindfulness&cntry=SA&draw=2&rank=1