Mindfulness for academic stress reduction in dental students
Keywords:
dental students, mindfulness, psychological stressAbstract
Introduction: Academic stress is a circumstance experienced by dental students due to the demands inherent in their theoretical and clinical training. Its persistence can have an impact on their physical and emotional well-being.
Objective: To analyze the effect of interventions based on Mindfulness to reduce academic stress in dental students.
Methods: A systematic literature review was carried out following the PRISMA 2020 guidelines. Studies published in English between 2015 and 2024 were included, extracted from the Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed, EBSCOhost, ProQuest databases and the Google Scholar search engine. Initially, 1751 articles were identified, of which only 5 met the established eligibility criteria. Boolean operators AND, OR and NOT were used for the search strategy to optimize the precision and relevance of the results.
Results: The studies included different methodological approaches: randomized controlled trials, mixed and longitudinal designs. Interventions ranged from mindfulness-based meditation and hybrid programs to self-care strategies. The results demonstrated a significant reduction in stress, as well as improvements in psychological health and coping strategies. Meditation stood out for its impact on emotional regulation in high academic demand contexts.
Conclusions: Mindfulness-based interventions are effective tools for reducing stress and improving the emotional well-being of dental students. The format, duration and structure of the interventions are crucial to their effectiveness.
Downloads
References
1. Barbayannis G, Bandari M, Zheng X, Baquerizo H, Pecor KW, Ming X. Academic stress and mental well-being in college students: correlations, affected groups, and COVID-19 [Internet]. Front Psychol. 2022; 13:886344. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.886344
2. Deng Y, Cherian J, Khan N, Kumari K, Sial MS, Comite U, et al. Family and Academic Stress and Their Impact on Students' Depression Level and Academic Performance [Internet]. Front Psychiatry. 2022; 13:869337. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyt.2022.869337
3. Schuman Z, Trombka M, Lovas DA, Brewer JA, Vago DR, Gawande R, et al. Atención plena and Behavior Change [Internet]. Harv Rev Psychiatry. 2020; 28(6):371-94. DOI: 10.1097/HRP.0000000000000277
4. Rogowska AM, Tataruch R. The relationship between Atención plena and athletes' mental skills may be explained by emotion regulation and self-regulation [Internet]. BMC Sports Sci MedRehabil. 2024; 16(68):1-13. DOI: 10.1186/s13102-024-00863-z
5. Parmentier FBR, García-Toro M, García-Campayo J, Yañez AM, Andrés P, Gili M. Atención plena and symptoms of depression and anxiety in the general population: the mediating roles of worry, rumination, reappraisal and suppression [Internet]. Front Psychol. 2019; 10:506. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00506
6. Pan Y, Li F, Liang H, Shen X, Bing Z, Cheng L, et al. Effectiveness of Atención plena-Based Stress Reduction on Mental Health and Psychological Quality of Life among University Students: A GRADE-Assessed Systematic Review [Internet]. Evid Based Complement Alternat Med. 2024; 2024:8872685. DOI: 10.1155/2024/8872685
7. Moore S, Mavaddat N, Auret K, Hassed C, Chambers R, Sinclair C, et al. The Western Australian medical schools Atención plena project: a randomised controlled trial [Internet]. BMC Med Educ. 2024; 24(1):1182. DOI: 10.1186/s12909-024-06128-0
8. Alzahrani AM, Hakami A, AlHadi A, Al-Maflehi N, Aljawadi MH, Alotaibi RM, et al. The effectiveness of Atención plena training in improving medical students' stress, depression, and anxiety [Internet]. PLoS One. 2023; 18(10):e0293539. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0293539
9. Alvarado-García PAA, Soto-Vásquez MR, Reyes-Sánchez LP, Sandoval-Bocanegra VA, Ullón-Ramírez RC, Vargas-Fernández Y, et al. An Online Atención plena Meditation Program as a Means for Mitigating Academic Stress among University Students [Internet]. Acad J Interdiscip Stud. 2023; 12(6):141. DOI: 10.36941/ajis-2023-0159
10. Abbas SZ, Mubeen N, Ayub T, Khan MA, Abbasi Z, Baig N. Comparison of stress levels among medical and dental students in the clinical years of training and their coping strategies [Internet]. J Pak Med Assoc. 2020; 70(6):1006-8. DOI: 10.5455/JPMA.294959
11. Frandsen TF, Nielsen MFB, Lindhardt CL, Eriksen MB. Using the full PICO model as a search tool for systematic reviews resulted in lower recall for some PICO elements [Internet]. J Clin Epidemiol. 2020; 127:69-75 DOI: 10.1016/j.jclinepi.2020.07.005
12. Page MJ, McKenzie JE, Bossuyt PM, Boutron I, Hoffmann TC, Mulrow CD, et al. Declaración PRISMA 2020: una guía actualizada para la publicación de revisiones sistemáticas [Internet]. J Clin Epidemiol. 2021; 134:178-189. DOI: 10.1016/j.jclinepi.2021.03.001
13. García-Puente M. Gestores de referencias como herramientas del día a día. Zotero [Internet]. Rev Pediatr Aten Primaria. 2020; 22(85):e37-e43. DOI: 10.4321/S1139-76322020000100006
14. Galante J, Dufour G, Vainre M, Wagner AP, Stochl J, Benton A, et al. A Atención plena-based intervention to increase resilience to stress in university students (the Mindful Student Study): a pragmatic randomised controlled trial [Internet]. Lancet Public Health. 2018; 3(2):e72-e81. DOI: 10.1016/S2468-2667(17)30231-1
15. González-Martín AM, Aibar-Almazán A, Rivas-Campo Y, Castellote-Caballero Y, Carcelén-Fraile MDC. Atención plena to improve the mental health of university students. A systematic review and meta-analysis [Internet]. Front Public Health. 2023; (4)11:1284632. DOI: 10.3389/fpubh.2023.1284632
16. Hofmann SG, Gómez AF. Atención plena-Based Interventions for Anxiety and Depression [Internet]. Psychiatr Clin North Am. 2017; 40(4):739-49. DOI: 10.1016/j.psc.2017.08.008
17. Kuhlmann SM, Burger A, Esser G, Hammerle F. A Atención plena-based stress prevention training for medical students (MediMind): study protocol for a randomized controlled trial [Internet]. Trials. 2015; 16(40):1-11. DOI: 10.1186/s13063-014-0533-9
18. Repo S, Elovainio M, Pyörälä E, et al. Comparison of two different Atención plena interventions among health care students in Finland: a randomised controlled trial [Internet]. Adv Health Sci Educ. 2022; 27:709-34. DOI: 10.1007/s10459-022-10116-8
19. Krüger M, Reintges J, Pütz AC, Röhr-Sendlmeier UM. Positive effects of two interventions to reduce stress in students of different courses of study [Internet]. Eur J Health Psychol. 2024; 31(4):165-176. DOI: 10.1027/2512-8442/a000123
20. Ehsan F, Iqbal S, Younis MA, Khalid M. An educational intervention to enhance self-care practices among 1st year dental students- a mixed method study design [Internet]. BMC Med Educ. 2024; 24:1304. DOI: 10.1186/s12909-024-03345-1
21. Hariton E, Locascio JJ. Randomised controlled trials - the gold standard for effectiveness research: Study design: randomised controlled trials [Internet]. BJOG. 2018; 125(13):1716. DOI: 10.1111/1471-0528.15199
22. Miles E, Matcham F, Strauss C, Cavanagh K . Making Atención plena Meditation a Healthy Habit [Internet]. Mindfulnes. 2023; 14:2988-3005. DOI: 10.1007/s12671-023-02258-6
23. Kuhlmann SM, Huss M, Burger A, Hammerle F. Coping with stress in medical students: results of a randomized controlled trial using a Atención plena-based stress prevention training (MediMind) [Internet]. BMC Med Educ. 2016; 16:316. DOI: 10.1186/s12909-016-0833-8
24. Batyrbekova G, Coban T, Hekimoglu C, Yildirim Pak D, Sahin MB, Guncu MB, et al. Future expectations, career choices and related factors among dental students: A cross-sectional study [Internet]. Eur Oral Res. 2022; 56(2):88-95. DOI: 10.26650/eor.2022932541
25. Arhoma N, Tantawi ME, Arheiam A. Career expectations and the motivating factors for studying dentistry in Libya [Internet]. BMC Med Educ. 2022; 22:849. DOI: 10.1186/s12909-022-03933-3
26. Ferreira FS, Barros I, da Costa Neves T, Margato Pazos J, Nordi Sasso Garcia PP. Stress amongst dental students in the transition from preclinical training to clinical training: A qualitative study [Internet]. Eur J Dent Educ. 2022; 26(4):873-80. DOI: 10.1111/eje.12842
27. Alamoush RA, Al-Sawaeir S, Baker DA, Aljamani SA, Alomoush SA, Al-Omiri MK. Stress experienced by dental students performing clinical training in different dental disciplines: a cross-sectional study [Internet]. J Occup Health. 2024; 66(1):1-10. DOI: 10.1093/joccuh/uiae006
28. Yavuz Sercekman M. Exploring the sustained impact of the Atención plena-Based Stress Reduction program: a thematic análisis [Internet]. Front Psychol. 2024; 15:1347336. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1347336
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Paul Martin Herrera Plasencia, Eric Giancarlo Becerra-Atoche
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Authors who have publications with this Journal accept the following terms:
- The authors will retain their copyright and guarantee the Journal the right of first publication of their work, which will simultaneously be subject to the Creative Commons Attribution License. The content presented here can be shared, copied and redistributed in any medium or format; Can be adapted, remixed, transformed or created from the material, using the following terms: Attribution (giving appropriate credit to the work, providing a link to the license, and indicating if changes have been made); non-commercial (you cannot use the material for commercial purposes) and share-alike (if you remix, transform or create new material from this work, you can distribute your contribution as long as you use the same license as the original work).
- The authors may adopt other non-exclusive license agreements for the distribution of the published version of the work (for example: depositing it in an institutional electronic archive or publishing it in a monographic volume) as long as the initial publication in this Journal is indicated.
- Authors are allowed and recommended to disseminate their work through the Internet (e.g., in institutional electronic archives or on their website) before and during the submission process, which can produce interesting exchanges and increase citations. of the published work.
