Examining the relationship of mindfulness to resilience in university students

Introduction: Mindfulness, a concept influenced by the Buddhist thinking, has attracted the attention of psychologists, psychotherapists, and researchers in the recent years. Mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) are regarded as one of the third generation or third wave cognitive-behavioral therapies. Many research studies have examined factors related to this variable. The present study aims to examine the relationship of mindfulness to resilience in university students.
Materials and Methods: The research method used in this study was of descriptive-correlational type. The sample consisting of 357 students (203 girls and 154 boys), who were selected from the Faculty of Humanities, the Faculty of Engineering, and Pardis Faculty of the University of Kashan, studying in the year 2016, was taken based on the stratified sampling method in proportion to the size of the strata, For data gathering purposes, the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (2003) and the Five Factor Mindfulness questionnaire (Baer, Smith, Hopkins, Krietemeyer, and Toney, 2006) were used. The obtained alpha coefficient values for variables mindfulness and resilience were 0.733 and 0.856, respectively, and those for the components of mindfulness-observing, describing, acting with awareness, accepting without judging of the inner experience, and non-reactivity to the inner experience- were 0.726, 0.667, 0.802, 0.724, and 0.623, respectively. For data analysis, the Pearson’s Correlation Coefficient was used with SPSS.
Results:There was a significant relationship between mindfulness and resilience among students, as agreed by other similar research (P<0.05). The findings of the study showed that mindfulness could lead to a boost in resilience among students.
 Conclusion: According to the results of the study, it is suggested that cultural, higher education, and other educational planning authorities throughout the country pay more attention to the improvement of mindfulness and resilience in university students and provide training in this area.