The Effect of Online Mindful Sitting Meditation on the Perceived Stress Levels of Medical Students in Sampaloc, Manila

Medical students face much perceived stress with regard to their academics, which can be very overwhelming. This perceived stress can harm their mental health, cognitive function and learning ability. Mindfulness-Based Meditation Stress Reduction (MBSR) teaches individuals to observe situations and thoughts in a nonjudgmental, nonreactive and accepting manner. With growing evidence of mindfulness meditation on reducing perceived stress levels, the researchers wanted to determine if MBSR, specifically mindful sitting meditation, would serve as a useful method to reduce perceived stress levels of medical students, specifically in Sampaloc, Manila. This study utilized a quasi-experimental research design using simple random sampling. The target population included first-year to fourth-year medical students from Manila, and the study was conducted using an online mindful sitting meditation lasting for 20 minutes a day for the experimental group while the control group was being observed simultaneously in a separate online room. Perceived stress levels were obtained from both the control and experimental groups before and after the intervention, and this collection of data persisted for a duration of five days. Afterwards, data was analyzed using the ANOVA and Wilcoxon signed-ranked tests, and the results showed that there was significant immediate improvement of stress levels after each mindful sitting meditation session (p = 0.006) with a slow but significant improvement in stress levels in a span of five days (p = 0.0493). This shows that mindful sitting meditation may be a useful tool for medical students to use to cope with their stress. Keywords: Mindfulness, mindful sitting meditation, meditation, stress, perceived stress, medical students