This semi-experimental study examines how Mindfulness facilitates a distress reduction in a group of health professionals. The sample comprises 29 professionals seeking stress reduction who undertook an 8 weeks psico-educative intervention, involving 28 hours of class, based on a program called Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction or MBSR. Results show a 35% reduction of distress, from percentile 75 to 45, combined with a 30% reduction in rumination and a 20% decrease in negative affect. These benefits lasted during the 3 months of the follow up period. The correlation analysis indicates that the decrease in distress is significantly related to the other two variables. These results confirm the effectiveness of MBSR to decrease distress and its applicability in training programs for health professionals.

Teachers constitute one of the professional collectives most affected by psychological problems. The purpose of this quasi-experimental study is to examine the efficacy of a mindfulness training programme to reduce psychological distress in a group of teachers. The sample comprised 68 teachers of Secondary School Education, from various public schools; half of them formed the experimental group, and the another half the control group. The levels of psychological distress were measured, in both groups, by the Symptom Checklist-90-R (SCL-90-R) before and after the application of the programme. Statistical analysis shows the significant reduction of three general measures of psychological distress (Global Severity Index, Positive Symptom Distress Index, and Positive Symptom Total), as well in all its dimensions (somatization, obsessive-compulsive, interpersonal sensibility, depression, anxiety, hostility, phobic anxiety, paranoid ideation, and psychoticism), in the experimental group compared with the control group. Follow-up measures show that these results were maintained for four months after termination of the intervention in the experimental group.

Una muestra representativa de profesores que trabajaban en cursos de los niveles de educación primaria y secundaria tanto en escuelas públicas como en privadas respondió a un cuestionario anónimo sobre información sociodemográfica y completó la Escala de Estimación para la Depresión (CES-D) del Centro para Estudios Epidemiológicos. Se clasificó a los profesores como deprimidos cuando puntuaban ≥ 16 en la CES-D; 27,5% de los sujetos estuvieron por encima de esta puntuación de corte. Se utilizó la regresión matemática para calcular un modelo multivariante con las variables titularidad del centro, nivel del curso y experiencia docente. Trabajar en una escuela pública, enseñar en el nivel de educación primaria y una experiencia docente mayor aumentaban el riesgo de síntomas depresivos.