Effects of a Brief Grateful Thinking Intervention on College Students ’ Mental Health

Publication date: Available online 29 November 2017 Source:Mental Health & Prevention Author(s): Tyler L. Renshaw, Dana K. Rock Gratitude-based interventions have been shown to significantly improve positive indicators of mental health and reduce negative indicators mental health. The present study used a randomized controlled trial design to test a brief grateful thinking-only exercise with a sample of college students (N = 97). Participants in the gratitude-based intervention condition (n = 54) were instructed to spend five minutes each day thinking about something they were grateful for, while participants in the activity-matched control condition (n = 43) were instructed to spend the same amount of time thinking about something they had learned recently. Descriptive results indicated that, compared to the control exercise, the grateful thinking-only exercise had greater therapeutic effects on happiness, life satisfaction, depression, stress, and negative affect. However, consideration of effect-size confidence intervals and associated inferential statistics suggested that we could not ultimately reject the null hypothesis. Overall, results suggest the need for including both activity-matched and passive control conditions within gratitude-based intervention research.
Source: Mental Health and Prevention - Category: Psychiatry Source Type: research