The effect of educational intervention according to mindfulness on the psychological well-being of female heads of households

Abstract Objective The low level of psychological well-being is one of the most common problems of the women who are the heads of households, and various educational programs have been conducted to improve the psychological well-being of such a group. The present study was conducted to outline the effectiveness of mindfulness-based educational intervention in the psychological well-being of women as the heads of households. Methods This research as a semi-experimental study was done by pretest–posttest design and control group. The study statistical population included all women as the heads of households in Shiraz, who had a file in the Shiraz based welfare office and at the same time their children were studying in schools covered by the 2nd district educational department of Shiraz in 2022–2023. Out of the female heads of the households in the statistical community, 30 women were selected as Purposive sampling and then randomly divided into two 15-individual groups, including experimental group (training on mindfulness-based therapy) and control group. The research tool included Ryff’s psychological well-being scale (Ryff, 1989). The experimental group was subjected to training on mindfulness-based therapy (Baer et al., 2006) during eight 90-min sessions. However, the control group did not receive any intervention. Result After running the intervention, a significant difference was seen between the components of autonomy, personal growth, purpose in life, self-acceptance, positive relationship with others, and psychological well-being after running the educational intervention between the experimental and control groups ( P < 0.05), while no meaningful difference popped up between the experimental and control groups in terms of environmental mastery as one of the aspects measured in psychological well-being scale after the educational intervention ( P = 0.602). Conclusion According to the results, it seems that psychologists can benefit from the method of training on mindfulness-based therapy in order to increase the psychological well-being of women as the heads of households.