Dr. Jean M. Lamont, an assistant professor in Bellarmine University's
psychology department, recently conducted a study that found "mindfulness" can reduce feelings of body shame among young women and potentially improve their health outcomes.
Lamont's
latest research has been accepted in the peer-reviewed journal
Mindfulness. Drawing upon Eastern religious traditions, psychologists define mindfulness as the practice of attending to the present with a non-judgmental focus, carefully observing your feelings without assigning them positive or negative value.
Lamont said high levels of body shame can affect physical health. She explained that people who are mindful are less likely to feel body shame, more likely to appreciate their body's natural signals and may be less susceptible to illness.
"If body shame makes you sick, then how can we interrupt that?" she asked. "If mindfulness is about attending to the present moment with a nonjudgmental focus, it probably reduces body shame, which is all about judgment of your body. If you can reduce judgment about the body, you'll probably will be more willing to pay attention to your natural bodily functions, which should make you more healthy. The findings of this new study, while correlational, support this idea."
Dr. Jean M. Lamont
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For her study, which involved 115 female undergraduate Bellarmine students, Lamont used questionnaires that measured mindfulness, body shame and responsiveness to bodily signals. Participants were asked to describe their overall health and self-report instances of illness during the study. She found that higher levels of mindfulness correlate with lower levels of body shame and a greater level of responsiveness to bodily signals.
Lamont said the study builds on her previous work on body shame and health outcomes.
"In one study, I found that the more body shame people felt, the less they wanted to pay attention to their bodies' own natural signals, such as hunger pangs," she said. "This meant that they valued their health less and had poorer health outcomes: that is, they had more infections, rated themselves as less healthy, and experienced more physical symptoms.
"In a second study, I tracked these variables in students over the course of the semester and found that body shame and not paying attention to your bodily signals at the beginning of the semester predicted poorer health at the end, even when controlling for body mass index, smoking, and depression. Importantly, poor health at the beginning of the semester did not predict body shame at the end, ruling out the possibility that illness caused my participants to feel ashamed of their bodies."
Lamont earned a bachelor's degree in psychology and English literature from Denison University, a master's in clinical psychology from Connecticut College and a doctorate in social psychology from The Pennsylvania State University. Her research interests bridge social and health psychology and focus on processes by which self-conscious emotions impact physical health attitudes, behaviors and outcomes.