Mindfulness, Movement, and Mood: Understanding how Digital Mindfulness-Based Interventions can support Physical Activity Behaviour Change for People at Risk of Mood Disorders

Abstract

Physical inactivity and mental ill-health are two indisputable public health priorities of our time. They affect over one billion people each and present a significant risk factor for one another. Physical activity interventions can effectively counter both, yet are often unavailable, inaccessible, or fail to engage their sedentary target populations. Mindfulness training has emerged as a promising method of facilitating engagement in behaviourally and motivationally demanding tasks, such as being physically active, by increasing self-regulatory abilities.

This thesis explores a novel application of mindfulness-based interventions by researching their potential to facilitate behaviour change, with a particular focus on supporting physical activity. It distils this knowledge into the development and evaluation of the first digital mindfulness-based intervention tailored to support physical activity engagement, while advancing our understanding of the mechanisms through which its effects are achieved.

Its four empirical chapters follow the Person-Based Approach to intervention development. First, a systematic review of evidence on interventions combining physical activity and mindfulness (Chapter 2) concludes that the literature base is in its infancy, yet growing and promising for mental health outcomes. Next, a qualitative interview study (Chapter 3) establishes an in-depth understanding of university students’ (an at-risk population) needs for combined interventions, contributing crucial insights on their conceptualisations of (mental) health, misconceptions about mindfulness, and the potential for additive effects of combined interventions over and above either approach. Concurrently, a large pragmatic randomised controlled trial (Chapter 4) empirically tests the potential of digital mindfulness for altering psychological predictors of behaviour change, identifying mechanisms of interest and finding promising effects of mindfulness training on health behaviour cognitions (including motivation, attitudes, and behavioural intentions).

The insights from Chapters 2-4 are translated, through expert stakeholder consultations and collaboration with a non-profit partner, into two series of 30 digital audio-guided mindfulness sessions (Chapter 5). The new intervention provides a free, commercially available and accessible tool to educate, empower, and assist anyone wishing to initiate (‘Getting Active’ pack) and maintain (‘Staying Active’ pack) regular physical activity. It does so by bringing together, for the first time, insights from mindfulness skills and training, behaviour change theory, and a detailed understanding of target users’ perspectives and needs.
Finally, a multi-method randomised controlled trial across three sites (Chapter 6) provides an initial evaluation of the new resource in a sample of insufficiently active university students. It finds promising changes in behavioural intentions to be active, although no additive effects on physical activity engagement relative to a wearable-based control condition in the short-term.

Taken together, the thesis considerably expands the current understanding of mindfulness-supported health behaviour change, though highlights the need for targeted support in adherence to digital, self-delivered resources. Given the undeniable need for behavioural shifts at scale in the coming decades, this body of work offers a timely new strategy and helps put mindfulness on the public health agenda.

Date of Award	26 Mar 2025
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Bath
Supervisor	Max Western (Supervisor), Ben Ainsworth (Supervisor), Olivia Maynard (Supervisor) & Paul Chadwick (Supervisor)