Mindfulness and psychotic experiences in college students

Abstract The study of the relation between psychotic experiences and mindfulness in the general population is linked to research into factors of risk and protection against the development of a psychotic disorder. This study looks into the presence of psychotic experiences in a sample of university students and whether there is any variation according to gender. It also analyzes the predictive and discriminant relation of mindfulness with these experiences. The sample consisted of 526 university students (72.8% women) with a mean age of 21.39 years (SD = 3.53). The results showed the presence of psychotic experiences with differing levels of intensity, with variations according to gender, and an inverse relationship between mindfulness and psychotic experiences. Results indicated that students with high scores in psychotic experiences had lower scores in mindfulness. Our findings imply that mindfulness may be a factor of protection against psychotic experiences and its training may have a role to play in the development and implementation of preventive and early intervention programs in risk groups in the general and clinical population.