Mindfulness meditation and aromatherapy to reduce stress and anxiety.

Coping with symptoms of stress and anxiety is a challenging experience and continues to tax the resources and limits of modern conventional health care. In the past 25–30 years, western medical science has turned increasing attention to the psychological and physical correlates of meditation, with mindfulness becoming quite popular in recent years. An extensive literature reviewwas performed; themajority of articles were rated at level ll evidence based on a scale of l–Vll (l being the best evidence). Findings of the literature review support the evidence-based practice project of using mindfulness meditation as an intervention to reduce both stress and anxiety levels (Lee et al., 2007; Leite et al., 2010; Malini, Uddip, & Vivek, 2011; Piet & Esben, 2011; Ramel et al., 2004; Schreiner & Malcolm James, 2008; Toneatto & Nguyen, 2007). There was no prior research using a mindfulness intervention combined with aromatherapy to reduce stress and anxiety for hospitalized psychiatric patients. The purpose of this pilot project was to develop and implement a stress management activity to provide in-patient psychiatric patients with self-improvement techniques to help promote healing, wellness, and to better copewith increased levels of stress andanxiety.Mindfulness meditation was merged with aromatherapy to create aromatherapy enhanced meditation as a unique stress management activity.