Sociodemographic Characteristics and Health Status of Mindfulness Users in the United States
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Sociodemographic Characteristics and Health Status of Mindfulness Users in the United States Otto Simonsson 1
&
Maryanne Martin 2
&
Stephen Fisher 1
# The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Objectives The aims of the present study are to provide population estimates for the prevalence of mindfulness use in the United States and to identify which groups are more likely to self-report mindfulness use. Methods Using data from the 2017 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), the current study analyzed 26,742 responses from adults in the United States and estimated patterns in the likelihood of self-reported mindfulness use across groups using logistic regression models. Results The results suggest that 5% of adults in the United States in 2017 had used mindfulness over the prior year, which is significantly more than the finding that 2% of adults in the United States had used mindfulness during the 12 months prior to the 2012 NHIS interview. The logistic regression models show that self-reported mindfulness use was less likely among married adults and more likely among women, sexual minorities, young and middle-aged adults, white adults, employed adults, adults without minor children in the family, adults from the West of the United States, adults with access barriers to healthcare, adults with cost barriers to healthcare, adults with mental illness, and adults with physical pain. Most notably, mindfulness use was reported by substantial numbers of respondents with access barriers to healthcare (10%), cost barriers to healthcare (9%), mental illness (15%), or physical pain (7%). Conclusions The results of the present study suggest an unequal distribution of mindfulness use across groups in the United States. Keywords Mindfulness . Sociodemographic . Health . United States . NHIS
In recent decades, there has been a surge of scientific interest in mindfulness—the quality of awareness that emerges from purposefully and nonjudgmentally paying attention to the present moment with an attitude of openness, acceptance, and curiosity (Kabat-Zinn 2003). The research in the field has generally been limited by poor research methodologies and small sample sizes (Goleman & Davidson 2017), but the evidence to date suggests that mindfulness-based practices and programs can be effective for chronic pain (Hilton et al. 2017), anxiety (de Abreu Costa et al. 2019), and depression (Goldberg et al. 2019). Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-020-01486-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Otto Simonsson [email protected] 1
Department of Sociology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
2
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
The proliferation of research on mindfulness-based interventions has coincided with efforts to integrate mindfulness-based practices and programs into a range of institutional settings, including the workplace, the military, the criminal justice system (Creswe
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