Mental Well-being Program Now Being Offered in Colleges!
FrienlyCare offers Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) for depression relapse and anxiety. Now it has developed a college-age course that can promote mental well-being and foster Filipino values.
Read about it in this article that appeared in the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
We hear this question a lot, but in these troubling times it’s gotten harder to answer. Whoever you are, wherever you are, challenges abound: global warming and destructive typhoons; the threat of nuclear war, political uncertainties, the increasing costs of food and fuel, social media disinformation, the festering health crisis and seemingly endless reports of danger on the news —just to name a few.
All of these challenges can be hard to face, let alone deal with. To cope, adolescents and adults alike turn to unhealthy coping mechanisms: binge drinking and use of harmful substances, excessive social media, etc., leading to sleep deficit, difficulty focusing, mental health concerns, teen pregnancies and many more. But if we want to move forward as a community and as a nation, we must be able to face the stresses of the world, and come together to take action. Sounds simple. The question is… how?
A report presented during the Mindfulness for Compassion and Well-being Conference, hosted recently by FriendlyCare Foundation, described promising preliminary results from a trial of a mindfulness training program for college-age students designed to equip them with skills to manage attention and focus, emotional regulation, heighten self-awareness and enhance their levels of altruism, compassion and empathy. These results are now being translated into a broader program embracing training for wellbeing and resilience which has already been adopted in a number of universities.
Study description
The study was a randomized control trial of a new mindfulness-based program customized to foster so-called “prosocial” traits, such as altruism, compassion and empathy, in a distinctly Filipino context. That is, the program was designed to build on traditional Filipino values such as kapwa, kagandahang-loob, and utang na loob. For the trial approximately 200 students from the University of the Philippines at Diliman and the University of the Cordilleras were enrolled into the study, and randomized into either the “treatment” arm, or an active control arm — non-customized “vanilla” mindfulness-based intervention. [See Sidebar: Mindfulness, mental health and well-being.]
The students met weekly for twelve weeks (on-line) in both arms of the trial, in classes of about 20 students. Each two-hour session involved experiential learning of new or improved skills such as awareness of one’s self and their environment, managing attention, emotional regulation and managing distress. For the treatment group there was additional emphasis on self-compassion and achieving a closer identification with one’s kapwa, or fellow human beings.
Between sessions the students were given home practice to reinforce what they had learned. Students were assessed both before and after the intervention, using a battery of psychological scales, comprising standard scales used world-wide and scales developed and validated here in the Philippines by Professor Gregorio Del Pilar’s Personality Research Laboratory at UP. Empathy was measured using the Pakikiramdam Scale, compassion by the Toronto Empathy Questionnaire, the items of which measure empathy and compassion; and altruism by the Interpersonal Generosity Scale.
Since it was believed that any increase in the target traits, e.g., empathy, would be mediated by an increase in mindfulness, this was measured by the Five-Factor Mindfulness Questionnaire. Other Filipino-specific measures were taken of kagandahang-loob and pakikipagkapwa-tao.
UP Diliman students practicing mindful movement in class before the pandemic
Formal results
The results of the study were quite different between the University of the Philippines (UP) and the University of the Cordilleras (UC).
The core hypothesis of the study was that the “treatment” group, i.e., the group receiving the augmented version of MBCT - augmented to foster generosity, compassion and empathy — would see greater improvement in these than the control group. This was not true of the UP students. However, there was confirmation of the hypothesis that mindfulness would mediate any change: a greater increase in mindfulness across the course of the study was associated with increased scores in generosity, compassion and empathy.
For the UC students the results were quite different, with the hypotheses largely confirmed. The treatment group outperformed the control group in improved measures of pakikiramdam, kagandahang-loob and pakikipagkapwa-tao, and, as was the case for the UP students, the gains appeared to be mediated by mindfulness.
The difference between the two sites for the trial might be explained by the fact that the universities or the students are intrinsically different in some way. It might also reflect that the study was conducted at two different times in the pandemic (beginning in March 2021 for UP and beginning in September 2021 for UC), with different levels of stress affecting the participants. For example, students may have had increased levels of stress at the end of the semester in UP and different technological capabilities and economic demands (need for students to work and study or care for the household simultaneously) in UC. Thus, we saw higher attrition rates in UC, but the beneficial effects were more pronounced for those who were able to finish the program.
Informal results
In addition to the formal evaluation of the study in statistical terms, the Conference heard about the informal evaluations — the reactions of participants, how they felt about what they had learned, and what actions they took as a result.
The course has also already sparked compassionate action among its participants. at the University of the Philippines support group PUGAD Sayk established a forum where course participants could help other students cope with the stress of being a student during the pandemic, using techniques learned in the course.
At the University of the Cordilleras one student reflected on how she can now get involved in current events, even when they cause her distress, while still remaining composed and capable of taking action:
I was more aware. I cared more about things that happened outside now, like the pandemic and other things. I became more aware… more concerned about the actual health of the world or like relations— I don’t make it affect my life, or how my day goes. Even if there are so much things going on in the world, it’s best to not make it affect your own life because you worry more than actually do something. That’s the difference [between] the present and the past for me.
Cherry Nean Bod-oy,
student at the University of Cordilleras
Future Action
The broader context for the study is that it was funded through a grant to FriendlyCare Foundation from the Templeton World Charity Foundation (TWCF). TWCF’s Global Innovations for Character Development Program seeks to establish character development as a
lever for social change, increased prosperity and overall human flourishing. These are themes that resonate with Filipino educators, at all levels, but particularly with universities, who recognize the need now, more than ever before, to increase our efforts to reach out to youth, strengthen their sense of self and purpose, and to reconnect them to Filipino values in effective, culturally appropriate ways.
Throughout the course of the study FriendlyCare has been active in training university faculty to deliver the intervention in the form of a university course titled “Mindfulness for Compassion and Well-being.” This is now being continued in the two test sites, and rolled out at De La Salle University, Tanada-Diokno College of Law and Guang Ming College.
Partners in the study reported here were FriendlyCare (lead organization, Tess Panganiban, CEO and Project Director), University of the Philippines / Diliman Department of Psychology (research organization, Professor Gregorio del Pilar, Research Director and Dr. Michael L. Tan – Filipino culture lead), the Centre for Mindfulness Studies, Toronto, (Tita Ang-angco and Tim Warner, curriculum design and overall project development) and University of Toronto (Norman Farb, neuroscientist and professor). The researchers acknowledge and are grateful to all at the research sites, both faculty and students (University of the Philippines Diliman, College of Human Kinetics and the University of the Cordilleras).
If you want this Mindfulness subject to be available in your school contact us at:
mindfulness@friendlycare.com.ph