Testing the effects of a mindfulness-based stress reduction program on a Serbian sample
The research was conducted by a group of authors from the Department of Psychology at the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade: Gvozden, M., Mladenović, IP, Purić, D., & Krstić, K. (2025). How does the mindfulness-based stress reduction program achieve its effects on emotional states? The mediating effects of rumination reduction and increase in insight. Mindfulness, 16(6), 1597–1611.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-025-02580-1
Topic:
The concept of full awareness (mindfulness) has gained importance in recent decades in the field of mental health. The aim of this work is to check the effectiveness of John Kabat-Zinn's Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Program (MBSR) on a Serbian sample. Although the program has been validated multiple times and has strong empirical support when it comes to working with a wide range of psychological problems, its effectiveness has not yet been tested on a Serbian sample. In addition to the general population, this research also advances the body of knowledge when it comes to developing mindfulness in future psychotherapists.
The results:
The research was conducted on a sample of 276 educators of rational-emotional and cognitive-behavioral therapy, of which 180 were in the experimental and 96 in the control group (87% of the sample was female and the average age was 32). The program lasted 8 weeks and the measurements were taken at two time points - immediately before the start of the program and one week after the end of the program. To measure full awareness, ruminative thinking style, insight into psychological states, dysfunctional feelings of depression, anxiety and stress, as well as three groups of positive feelings (relaxation, activation and satisfaction), questionnaires were used that were repeatedly validated and proved to be reliable. measuring tool.
Conclusion:
The program achieves medium to large effects when it comes to improving full awareness and reducing ruminative thinking, as well as reducing negative feelings (especially depression and stress) and increasing positive feelings (especially feelings of relaxation and satisfaction).
The conducted research confirms the effectiveness of the MBSR program when it comes to reducing dysfunctional thought patterns. Also, the program proved to be effective when it comes to reducing negative and increasing the intensity of positive emotional states.
The conducted research also underlines the importance of increasing the full awareness of psychotherapists in education as an important factor in mental health, because good mental health of therapists is a prerequisite for providing effective help to therapeutic clients.
Research is underway that examines the effectiveness of the Mindfulness program and its mechanisms of action. The research is conducted by Matija Gvozden and her colleagues from the Department of Psychology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade. Examining the mechanisms of action of the MBSR program is important in order to better understand the nature of the processes underlying its effectiveness, and to understand the nature of those processes.