Campus Location
Dallas Campus (Online)
Date of Award
2-2023
Document Type
DNP Project
Department
Nursing
Degree Name
Doctor of Nursing Practice
Committee Chair or Primary Advisor
Dr. Linda Gibson
Second Committee Member or Secondary Advisor
Dr. Cheryl Green
Abstract
Abstract
Chronic stress and its effect on both physical and mental health have been a topic of increasing interest in the past several decades. There is mounting evidence that recurrent, persistent stress of both a physiologic and psychological nature leads to a dysfunction in the hypothalamic pituitary axis (HPA), the system which helps the body recover and adapt to short term stress. In long term stress, this HPA dysfunction leads to impairment of the immune and neuroendocrine systems resulting in chronic low-grade inflammation. This type of chronic inflammation acts as a precursor to several chronic illnesses such as diabetes, hypertension, cancer, and mental illness. To compound this problem, individuals who already live with chronic illness are more susceptible to this type of chronic stress due to the burden of chronic disease management. This leads to an exacerbation of an already present health condition and increases morbidity and risk of mortality. Since psychological stress is an overall subjective condition, individual perception of how difficult a stressor is to predict, manage and control is a key factor in determining how detrimental it will be. This study proposed to determine whether utilizing mind body therapies, in this case mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) techniques, would help decrease the perception of chronic disease related stress within the primary care setting. This is a quantitative study evaluating how perception of stress is affected by an MBSR type intervention. This was a pre and posttest intervention and the tool utilized was the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) Questionnaire. Each participant was given instruction on MBSR techniques and follow up was done at a two-week interval with revaluation of a second PSS Questionnaire. All participants had a decrease in perception of stress following the intervention as well as decreased reported reactivity to unpredictable life events.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Gil, Anna Celia, "Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Techniques in Chronic Illness" (2023). Digital Commons @ ACU, Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 554.
https://digitalcommons.acu.edu/etd/554