The Promise of Mindfulness for Clinical Practice Education

Mindfulness as a way of addressing the deficits in clinical psychology training programmes: A review

“…Existing studies show significant levels of stress among clinical psychology trainees (Cushway, 1992;Myers et al, 2012). Trainees are also vulnerable to difficulties such as burnout and vicarious traumatisation, particularly when they are new to practicing (Gockel, 2010;Adams & Riggs, 2008). There is no known published empirical research to show that stress and other stress-related outcomes hinder or impair professional functioning among trainee psychologists.…”

“…This would allow clients a safe environment to fully express their feelings, and this can in itself be a positive experience in therapy (Fulton, 2005;Safran & Reading, 2008). This also enhances the client's ability to build affect tolerance; this has been found to be important to improve difficulties such as anxiety and addiction (Gockel, 2010). Qualitative research has shown that mindfulness helps trainees tolerate their clients' and their own affect, thus creating a 'holding environment' for the client's feelings (Christopher & Maris, 2010).…”

“…Researchers have noticed compatibility between the challenges in professional development and self-care, and the aims and outcomes of practicing mindfulness (Gockel, 2010;Bruce et al, 2010). In order to understand this compatibility, it is useful to first understand the nature of mindfulness and how it has been applied to clinical practice and training.…”

“…Clinical psychology training also involves learning skills such as active listening, questioning, empathy, re-framing, and confrontation (Ivey, Ivey, & Zalaquett, 2010). Some of these skills are more complex and dynamic in nature; in addition to interpersonal components, they also have intrapersonal dimensions pertaining to internal qualities and attitudes of the trainees (Gockel, 2010). Research suggests that it is important for therapists to use their intrapersonal skills to create therapeutic presence, which Gellar and Greenberg (2002) described as having three components: an openness to the client's experiences, openness to one's own experiences when working with the client, and the ability to interact with the client based on this experience.…”

“…It has been suggested that mindfulness training can help with reducing stress and stress-related psychological problems (Gockel, 2010). Empirical research which has used mindfulness training with trainee samples found that the interventions led to improvements in their self-care and psychological well-being.…”