The purpose of this study was to examine the mediating effects of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program on Stress response, self-efficacy, emotional intelligence and burnout among nurses.

The study was a nonequivalent control group pretest-posttest design, with 34 participants (experimental group: 17, control group: 17). The Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program for Small and Medium Sized Hospital Nurses for this study was conducted in pre-class, in-class, and post-class stages for a total of 8 weeks Data were analyzed with an independent t-test and repeated measures ANOVA.

The experimental group showed significant improvement in stress response (F=3.37, p=.041), burnout (F=3.38, p=.040), emotional intelligence (F=5.10, p=.009) and self-efficacy (F=3.51, p=.049).

The results of this study show that MBSR program is an effective stress management method for small and medium Sized Hospital Nurses. Therefore, the MBSR program is recommended to nurses and health care providers for stress management.

This study aimed to examine the influence of anxiety sensitivity on task performance and physiological stress response, and to assess the effect of depression in this process for the youth population.

We presented participants with an uncontrollable stress situation where they were required to perform mental arithmetic, based on the Montreal Imaging Stress Task (MIST). A total of 29 participants volunteered for this study. They completed the Anxiety Sensitivity Index-Revised and Patient Health Questionnaire-9 to measure their levels of anxiety sensitivity and depression. Two saliva samples, one before and one after the experiment, were collected to assess the change in cortisol levels as an index of physiological stress response.

Participants with high anxiety sensitivity showed lower performance on the mental arithmetic tasks and a significant increase in a salivary cortisol level, compared to those with low anxiety sensitivity. Furthermore, cortisol levels showed a remarkable increase where high anxiety sensitivity was coupled with depressed mood. In other hands, the levels of cortisol remained unchanged despite high anxiety sensitivity with low depressed mood.

Our results confirm that the interaction between anxiety sensitivity and depression affects participants’ task performance and stress response, as measured through behavioral tasks and physiological data with self-report indices. Also, through the physiological data, we examined that those who have a high level of anxiety sensitivity showed maladaptive responses under high stressful situation.