Feasibility of an online mindfulness-based program for patients with melanoma

The intervention is a 6-week online mindfulness-based program designed to: (1) help patients understand the potential benefits of using mindfulness in their day to day life; (2) support the establishment of daily meditation practice. Each week of the program explores a different topic, which builds on the topic explored the week before. The program includes three main components: (1) educational component – weekly themes related to the application of mindfulness. Participants are invited to watch at the beginning of each week, a series of videos (the number varies for each week), each 40 seconds to 60 seconds long. The scripts of those videos can be downloaded if participants wish to refer to the information at a later stage; (2) informal practice. Participants are given a weekly mindfulness-based task to practice during their daily activities; and (3) formal meditation practice. Participants are asked to practice meditation twice daily for 5 minutes each time. This time is increased to 10 minutes each practice from week 3 onwards. Participants will receive an email at the start of each week with a link to a brief questionnaire inquiring about their level of engagement with the program. Following completion of the questionnaire, participants will be directed to a video introducing the theme for the upcoming week. At the end of each video, participants will be reminded to keep up with their daily meditation practice (formal practice), and will be given a specific mindfulness task to practice during their daily activities (informal practice). To support participants with establishing a meditation routine, emails containing a link to a short, guided meditation audio file will be sent to participants twice daily. These emails will serve as reminders to meditate and will provide easy access to the meditation practice of the week. The website will have a section addressing common questions about meditation, which participants will be able to consult at any time throughout the course of the program. The mindfulness program can be accessed at any time via direct login to the Website or via the hyperlink sent to participants in the weekly e-mails. The software used to run the mindfulness program will allow tracking of participants’ online activity, including login date/times, navigation patterns, page views and duration, and features used (video, audio, and document downloads). A set of three questions will be presented weekly to capture information on any use of other types of meditation unrelated to the intervention, and frequency of practice. Another three questions will estimate the amount of informal practice over the past week, and the specific use of the weekly topic, using a 5-point Likert scale. These questions will be presented to users at the end of each week, prior to the introduction of the next weekly topic.