Mindfulness Based Tinnitus Stress Reduction

Healing From Home
Hello, my name is Dr. Jennifer Gans, and I'm here to present some findings from a recent study called Healing From Home: An Examination of an Online Mindfulness-Based Tinnitus Stress Reduction Course During the 2020 COVID Pandemic.

I was working with a group of researchers from Idaho State University on this study back in March of 2020. When COVID hit, I decided to make the online course, MindfulTinnitusRelief.com, free to anybody all over the world to take during that shelter-in-place period.

And I received a lot of interest in taking this course, and we took the results from this data, and we have recently come out with a study showing the amazing results that we got for people taking this eight-week online course found at MindfulTinnitusRelief.com.

Study Participants and Outcome Measures
So, our subjects were about 994 from around the world, and we used outcome measures—the Tinnitus Functional Index and the Perceived Stress Scale—to measure change in tinnitus bother.

And we measured our subjects on four different occasions: pre-treatment, at three weeks, mid-treatment, and then at the end of the course at eight weeks post-treatment, and once again at six months follow-up.

And the results that we had were quite, quite impressive.

Tinnitus bother went from severe at the very beginning, significantly down to about moderate tinnitus bother at about three weeks, and then down to mild tinnitus bother at the end of the eight-week period.

And six months out, those gains were maintained.

So, we were pretty excited about the results to show that this online eight-week course was able to help so many people during the pandemic, and we're happy to get these results out in a top-tiered, peer-reviewed journal, and we are hoping to share the results with the tinnitus community.

Three Levels of Support
What we found so powerful about this course is that it really helps people on three different levels.

Number one, the course itself—the eight-week online course—helps people by lowering their anxiety about tinnitus.

Number two, making sure they are an expert on what tinnitus is and what tinnitus is not.

And then lastly, it cobbles together their resources to heal by teaching them a mindfulness meditation practice so that they can reduce the stress and be able to put tinnitus where it belongs, into the non-bothersome category, and then obviously habituation into the background.

Sharing the Results
So, we are really looking forward to sharing these results with the world and to help people to suffer less with tinnitus.

And for those of you who are interested in reading the study, the study can be found at the American Journal of Audiology, a publication that recently came out in January of 2023.

And if you have any questions, please go to the course at MindfulTinnitusRelief.com, where you'll find a way to contact me.

Thank you.