Christian accommodative mindfulness in the clinical treatment of shame, depression, and anxiety: Results of an N-of-1 time-series study.

Abstract

Mindfulness-based treatments have shown efficacy for a variety of conditions; however, some religious populations may have concerns with the strategies due to the Buddhist roots of the interventions. Some Christians suffering with mental health conditions can be reluctant to seek professional services for fear of being given treatments that will contradict or disregard their cultural and spiritual belief systems. Therefore, adaptations to evidence-based mindfulness interventions are needed for therapists to use with such clients. The current study incorporated explicitly religious constructs to create a Christian accommodative mindfulness (CAM) protocol that was used with a small group of Christian psychotherapy clients seeking treatment for symptoms of depression or anxiety. Shame, which is often at the root of many psychological and spiritual health conditions, was also measured as were a variety of resiliency factors to determine the effectiveness of the CAM protocol in a real-world, clinical setting. Results from this N-of-1 time-series study using five subjects revealed significant effect sizes (more than half of the total individual effect sizes measured were found to be "very effective") that associate CAM with decreased depression, anxiety, and shame and increased resiliency measures in the sample. These results are discussed, limitations acknowledged, and recommendations for further research are given.

Postsecular, spiritually integrated gestalt therapy.

“…Effects of accommodating mindfulness to the Christian spirituality of evangelical Christian patients in regard to shame, depression, anxiety, stress and spiritually related resiliency factors confirm that mindfulness strategies can be adapted for these clients. Growth in a client's belief in God's grace can impact treatment conceptually and in terms of outcomes (Jones et al, 2021).…”

appropriation of mindfulness in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland

“…While the 'Christianization' of the practice as outlined above has not received that much attention (although Brown 2018 on the 'Christianization' of yoga largely applies to mindfulness as well), there are plenty of studies in the area of mental health and clinical psychology that have explored, and also directly argued in favour of, adapting mindfulness to the mental-health treatment and therapy of people who adhere to Christian beliefs (e.g. Symington and Symington 2012;Frederick and White 2015;Garzon and Ford 2016;Jones et al 2021). Indeed, as many of these studies have provided their own clinical and therapeutic justifications as to why forms of mindfulness specifically adapted for Christians should be created, they have often (perhaps inadvertently) come very close to presenting their own particular arguments for (other types of) 'Christianized' versions of the practice.…”

Holy be the Lay: A Way to Mindfulness Through Christian Poetry

“…Likewise, MBPs have also been developed to incorporate religion, with a number being tailored to Christian clients (e.g. [38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50]). These Christian MBPs demonstrate that the underpinning philosophy of the mindfulness practice can find parallels in Christian practice and theology, with studies suggesting positive effects (see Garzon et al [39] for a review).…”

“…Similar themes are also central to the development of Christian Accommodative Mindfulness (CAM) e.g., [38][39][40]42]. CAM draws on Knabb et al's [45] identification of "humble detachment" as a key Chrstian construct that is associated with decreases in worry and rumination.…”