Promoting the Emotional Well-Being of Undergraduate Students by Practicing the Examen Meditation: A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial

The emotional well-being of undergraduate students continues to be an urgent concern as the prevalence rates for anxiety, depression, and other psychiatric disorders have reached historic levels (Healthy Minds Network, 2024). As a result, colleges and universities are developing and delivering evidence-based programming to meet this pressing problem and promote emotional well-being. This randomized control trial (N = 70) used a pretest–posttest design to evaluate the effects that an Examen meditation had upon undergraduates’ emotional well-being as measured by anxiety (GAD-7), depression (PHQ-9), gratitude (GQ-6), life satisfaction (SWL), and perceived stress (PSS). The Examen is a meditative Christian prayer exercise developed by Saint Ignatius of Loyola dating back nearly 500 years. The Examen can be completed in about 15 min or less and is comprised of five steps: presence, gratitude, awareness, forgiveness, and hope (Manney, 2011). Participants in this brief intervention (six weeks) listened to a digital recording of an Examen. An evaluation of the mean scores indicated an increase in measures of gratitude (p < 0.05) among those participants who practiced the Examen. These initial findings suggest that the Examen may potentially serve as a primary prevention intervention that enhances emotional well-being (gratitude) for undergraduate students who desire a spiritually based intervention. While further research is needed to better assess the applications and effect of the Examen on emotional well-being, colleges and universities may be interested in offering guided meditations like the Examen since these interventions may be easily accessible, economical, efficacious, and inclusive (spiritual and secular versions are available) and can be scaled quickly.