(PS8-D94) Mindful Awareness Facilitates the Protective Effect of Social Support on Positive Mental Health in the Presence of Stress

Background: Social support is one of the most potent protective factors for mental health among people exposed to stressful conditions (Velndo-Soriano et al., 2019) and is a strong predictor of quality of life (Alsubaie et al., 2018). However, the effectiveness of social support as a protective factor is not only dependent upon the level at which it is received; it is also dependent on how it is perceived. Mindfulness may facilitate the perception of social support and the appraisal of social support as a positive experience.

Mindfulness-to-Meaning Theory suggests that the metacognitive features of dispositional mindfulness should potentiate the benefits of social support by disrupting automatic negative emotional reactions and increasing attention to previously unattended information (Garland et al., 2015). Therefore, mindful awareness may increase people’s ability to attend to and positively appraise explicit social support, even when under stress (Chen et al., 2019; Chen et al., 2021). In turn, this may lead to improved mental health and well-being. Thus, we hypothesized that social support would more strongly predict positive mental health during times of stress among individuals with higher trait levels of mindful awareness.

Method: To test this hypothesis, we surveyed 208 university students during a period of high stress – the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic (April–May 2020). Controlling for demographics (age, gender, race, ethnicity), we used linear regression to test the interaction between perceived social support (2-Way Social Support Scale, Receiving Dimensions) and mindful awareness (Mindful Attention Awareness Scale) to predict positive mental health (Positive Mental Health Scale).

Results: Consistent with the hypothesis, we found a significant interaction between social support and mindful awareness ( = .20, p < .001). Upon probing this interaction, we found that when mindful awareness was both average and high, social support significantly predicted positive mental health ( = .32, p < .001;  = .51, p < .001, respectively). However, when mindful awareness was low, social support did not significantly predict positive mental health ( = .12, p = .13).

Conclusions: Results indicate that people may need mindful awareness to benefit from social support. This is especially important during times of severe stress, such as during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, when mental health was particularly low. Therefore, mindfulness interventions may help people to reap the full benefits of social support to mitigate stress.