Abstract:

BACKGROUND: Mindfulness and acceptance-based therapies have been known as the “third wave” of psychotherapy, and this kind of therapies can improve the physical and social function, and reduce the effect of pain to the patient life with chronic pain. At present a number of published analogue studies have demonstrated that such approaches lead some positive results for laboratory-induced acute pain, but the results of researches are still inconsistent.
OBJECTIVE: To investigate the effect of mindfulness training on subjective pain perception, pain tolerance and heart rate changes in healthy college students experienced laboratory-induced pain.
METHODS: Eight students who came from Capital Normal University served as experimental group, and 8 university students from a psychological minor course served as control group. Participants in the experimental group were offered 8 weeks mindfulness training. Pre-post Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire and cold pressor test were administrated. During the cold pressor tests, data of pain threshold, pain tolerance, subjective pain intensity, and heart rate were collected.
RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: Nonparametric tests indicated that the score of FFMQ (Z=-2.366; P < 0.05) and pain tolerance (Z=-2.117; P < 0.05) significantly increased in the mindfulness training group. There were no significant changes on pain threshold, subjective pain intensity, or heart rate (P > 0.05) in either group. The results showed that mindfulness training can enhance the pain endurance, but has no significant effect on the heart rate response to acute pain.