StressCare offers Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and pain management in the San Francisco Bay Area. Services are provided on an outpatient basis as an adjunct to a participant’s regular health care.
StressCare’s work is based on the pioneering efforts of Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn and the stress reduction clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center (UMSRC) featured in the Bill Moyers’ PBS presentation Healing and the Mind.
This clinical service is presented as an 8-Week Course comprised of an orientation, eight weekly class meetings and a six-hour session on a weekend day (altogether 27.5 hours of instruction) plus daily home assignments.
Highly qualified individuals experienced in the clinical application of mindfulness teach StressCare courses.
Patients are referred for MBSR who have cancer, heart disease, hypertension, GI distress, HIV/AIDS, anxiety and panic, headaches, sleep disturbance, fatigue, skin disorders and other diagnoses. Patients are taught in groups of 15 to 30, unrestricted by gender, physical ability, diagnosis or referral source. This approach has been shown to be effective for patients with varied economic and social backgrounds.
Patients are referred to StressCare by their physicians, psychologists, body workers and other healers; many are referred by family and friends or are self-referred. No pre-course screening is required other than the registration process itself.
Compared to in-patient and one-on-one behavioral strategies, StressCare’s 8-Week Course is a low-cost intervention which achieves a high degree of patient compliance during and after the 8-Week Course.
StressCare’s 8-Week Course includes:
- Intensive training to develop voluntary attention skills as the major self-regulatory modality (mindfulness meditation)
- A range of techniques in order to optimize the program’s appeal and its applicability to patients’ circumstances
- Techniques include relaxation, mindful breathing and body awareness, guided meditation, gentle movement adapted to individual needs, group discussion, and exercises in awareness of everyday life
- Reframing of perceptions of stress and chronic pain based on direct experience
- Specific strategies for coping with pain
- Information on attitude and behavior factors known to promote healing
- Two compact disks and a workbook are provided to guide patients’ work between classes.
Key outcomes of the 8-Week Course include:
- Reduced pain and stress
- Improved pain- and stress-coping capability
- Increased stress-hardiness, relaxation, physical strength and flexibility
- Enhanced self-awareness and sense of well-being
- More successful inter-personal relations
- More effective utilization of medical care
- Overall strengthening of parameters for healing
Refer to the Bibliography for supporting studies. Read summaries of outcomes on our Results pages.
