Publication of the week: Dr Jasmine Hearn

17 April 2018

Hearn, J. H. and Finlay, K. A. (2018). Internet-delivered mindfulness for people with depression and chronic pain following spinal cord injury: a randomized, controlled feasibility trial. Spinal Cord.

Each year in the UK around 1,200 people are diagnosed with a spinal cord injury (SCI) of which chronic pain and symptoms of depression are common consequences. Pain medication is often ineffective, and efforts are being made to explore psychological pain management as well as to aid adjustment to injury. Further, given the loss of functional mobility associated with SCI, face-to-face therapies may be more difficult for people with SCI to engage with.

Psychologists in the Medical School and Psychology Department collaborated with Breathworks, an international organisation involved in training mindfulness teachers to work with people with long-term health conditions, on a three year-long study to explore the role that the internet has to play in delivering psychological interventions to this population. The results show that internet-delivered mindfulness was an effective method to reduce depression, anxiety, and pain unpleasantness, whilst also improving quality of life. These benefits were demonstrated upon completion of the eight-week course, and continued to improve when participants were followed up three months later. The results suggest that the internet may be an extremely useful tool to improve access to psychological interventions for vulnerable groups.

Dr Jasmine Hearn, leading the research as Chief Investigator, said: “This study marks the first step in documenting the benefits of both mindfulness-based interventions for people with SCI, as well as underscoring that the internet can be utilised successfully to enable less geographically mobile people to access therapies that they may not have had before.”