The Effect of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) on Reducing Academic Burnout and Increasing Academic Well-being in Studens

Academic burnout and academic well-being of factors affecting performance of the students that consider to them is essential. Thus, the present research was conducted by the aim of investigating the effect of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) on reducing academic burnout and increasing academic well-being in students.

The present study was conducted by semi-experimental method and used a pretest-posttest with control group design. The population of the research included all the male students of Islamic Azad university of Gorgan branch in 2017-2018 academic years. The sample consisted of 40 students who, after initial interview and based on research inclusion-exclusion criteria, were selected by available sampling method and, then, were assigned into experiment and control groups via random assignment method. For gathering the data, academic burnout questionnaire of Bersu and colleagues (2007) and academic wellbeing scale of Pietarinen and colleagues (2014) were used. The MBSR training was provided for the experiment group in eight 2-hour session in groups (one session per week), but the control group received no intervention. For testing the research hypothesis, univariate multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) in SPSS 24 were used.

Results of analysis of covariance suggested that MBSR training significantly reduced academic burnout and increased academic wellbeing in the subjects of the experiment group compared to the control group (p value < 0.01).

According to the findings of the current study, it is recommended that student counseling centers in universities would provide mindfulness training workshops in order to reduce academic burnout and increase academic wellbeing in students.