(PS13-B42) The Impact of an Online Mindfulness Workshop on College Students’ Mental Health

College students experience elevated levels of stress which has led to them experiencing higher rates of anxiety and depression than the general population (Eustis et al., 2017; Bai et al., 2020). Mindfulness interventions have been shown to reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression. Despite the availability of effective interventions, college students remain an underserved population.  One way to make treatment more accessible is providing online interventions. Past online interventions have focused on self-help rather than guided support provided in person, such as through workshops. To bridge this gap, the present study investigated the effectiveness of an online mindfulness workshop. The workshop consisted of psychoeducation on stress, mindfulness and committed action. In addition to psychoeducation on mindfulness, students we asked to follow along with a guided breathing workshop. The study used a repeated measures design and compared students’ 1) anxiety, 2) depression, 3) stress, 4) social anxiety,  and 5) state-trait mindfulness before the workshop to 1 week after the workshop. This study also compared college students’ 1) positive affect and 2) negative affect before a mindfulness exercise and immediately after. It was hypothesized that after the workshop there would be a reduction in symptoms and negative affect, and that there would be an increase in state-trait mindfulness post workshop. The sample consistent of college students from a university in the southeast. For the pre workshop sample (N= 64), 58% identified (their race) as white, 23% identified as black, 8% identified as Hispanic, 5% identified as Asian, 2% identified as other, and 5% did not report their race. This sample consisted of 48% cisgender women, 12% cisgender men, 1% transgender men, 1% agender, 1% nonbinary, and 2% preferred not to answer. In this sample, 53% identified (their sexual orientation) as straight, 10% as LGBTQ+, and 1% did not report their sexual orientation. Twenty students completed the one-week post-workshop survey. Results replicated prior studies with in-person mindfulness interventions (Eustis et al., 2017) as well as online interventions (Cavanagh et al., 2018), including significant reduction in depressive symptoms [t (20) = 2.48, p=0.01] and anxiety [t (20) = 1.95, p=0.03] post workshop. The study also resulted in a reduction in negative affect [t (20) = 5.78, p < 0.01] after the mindfulness exercise. However, mindfulness decentering decreased t (20) = 2.34, p=0.02] one week after the workshop. This study shows that online interventions have the potential to make psychoeducation as well as mindfulness skills more accessible to college students.