Listening to them, that is … not making yet another one.
Your ageing correspondent loves a good podcast.
While by no means an early adopter of the format, a gift subscription to The Rest is History podcast a year or so back converted this occasional dabbler into a full-blown addict.
As unbreakable habits go it’s a fairly harmless one, and, as new research released today suggests, listening to podcasts can actually have a positive impact on wellbeing and attitude for a range of mental health issues.
Publishing in PLOS Mental Health, boffins from the University of Melbourne and the University of New England reviewed how podcasts are being used as a platform for mental health-related interventions.
The study included papers on audio-only podcasts with at least one mental health-related outcome including symptoms, treatment or management of mental health issues, mental health literacy or knowledge, and mental illness stigma, prejudice or discrimination.
The most common podcast interventions were meditation or mindfulness exercises and psychoeducational or therapeutic content, which together made up 80% of the studies.
What the study authors found was at least some evidence suggesting that podcasts focused on various mental health-related outcomes, including improvements in mindfulness, body image, and stigmatising attitudes, were indeed effective.
So far, so good.
The downside is that there is a huge diversity of podcast-based interventions out there and the attrition rate from users is significant.
“Future podcast-based intervention studies need to carefully consider the dosage, content, and pragmatic factors in order to evaluate their efficacy and ensure they are safe and appropriate for both selective and universal intervention efforts,” the authors write.
“This requires careful consideration of health communication literature to inform a theory of change relevant to the medium as well as the message. Evaluation studies could also consider using objective or behavioural outcomes, and increasing the usage of control and comparison conditions, to improve study quality.”
Or in other words, it’s still a bit of a lottery and a shed load more work needs to be done before we can reliably decide which podcasts might work best for which people with which conditions.
On the other hand, podcasts are a cheap and accessible resource for most folks, so the upside potential could be considerable as the knowledge base increases.
And on that bombshell, it’s “adios amigos” from BP-er Grant who’s about to undergo a mental health intervention in the guise of two weeks’ vacation.
Send podcast recommendations and story tips to penny@medicalrepublic.com.au.
