The influence of body-mind-spirit interventions on well-being may be poorly understood

1. Few studies included all concepts of the Body-Mind-Spirit (BMS), including detailed descriptions of the intervention, and showed effectiveness in holistic outcomes.

2. Only three included studies were considered high quality.

Evidence Rating Level: 1 (Excellent)

BMS is a treatment method used worldwide to achieve an internal state of balance, not just the absence of illness. However, a unified definition of BMS is lacking which presents itself as a barrier to properly developing interventions to improve well-being. As a result, the objective of the present systematic review was to understand how BMS was reported in the literature: its definition, the components of its interventions, the interventionists, the outcomes, effectiveness, and quality of the studies.

Of 10185 studies, 20 (n=2662) were included from database inception to August 2020. Studies were included if they studied the effects of BMS on all 3 perspectives of wellbeing (body, mind, and spirituality). Studies were excluded if the term “BMS” did not refer to body-mind-spirit or were secondary data analyses. The risk of bias was assessed using the risk of bias tool from the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions.

Results demonstrated that a clear definition for the BMS model was not established, few studies included all three concepts of the BMS model or offered detailed descriptions of body, mind, and spirit; few described BMS training in detail, and less than half showed effectiveness in holistic outcomes. Furthermore, only three studies were considered high quality. Despite these results, the study was limited by the low quality of the included studies. However, the present study provided important gaps in the literature concerning BMS interventions which may inform future research.

Click to read the study in Journal of Evidence-Based Integrative Medicine

Image: PD

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