Culturally Adapted Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction: a hypothetical South-African case study

This hypothetical case study investigated how a locally tailored 8-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program improved subjective well-being and gratitude in a 24-year-old Black South African male office employee from Mbombela. The intervention merged traditional African healing practices with mindfulness techniques, weekly 2-hour group sessions, guided daily 45-minute practices and a full-day retreat. Low-socioeconomic Black males are under-represented in positive psychology (PP) research and face stressors such as language barriers, racial dynamics, and social pressure to represent their culture positively in the professional world. This research demonstrated how merging mindfulness into the local culture can yield enhanced results and positively impact well-being in non-WEIRD populations with a significant potential for positive psychology interventions. Quantitative data was collected using the Gratitude Questionnaire-Six Item Form (GQ-6; α = 0.84) and the Subjective Happiness Scale (SHS; α = 0.88) in a single-case pretest-post-test design: both measures improved significantly, with GQ-6 increasing by 94% (from 17 to 33) and SHS by 175% (from 2 to 5.5). These findings suggest that when Indigenous knowledge is combined with such psychological frameworks, culturally adapted mindfulness interventions can effectively enhance well-being outcomes in non-WEIRD populations. Such insights highlight the global potential of PP to support diverse populations and to implement culturally adapted interventions in a South African work setting.