OXFORD MINDFULNESS CENTRE

The Oxford Mindfulness Centre is an international centre of excellence within Oxford University’s Department of Psychiatry that works with partners around the world to prevent depression and enhance human potential through the therapeutic use of mindfulness.

It carries out research into the efficacy of mindfulness and its underlying mechanisms, it has programmes of education and training in mindfulness-based interventions, and it provides mindfulness courses within the National Health Service and for the general public.

The Oxford Mindfulness Centre (OMC) was founded in 2008 within Oxford University’s Department of Psychiatry.  It draws on Oxford’s 800 year-old tradition of world-renowned scholarship and science, and the latest evidence-based medicine.

To prevent depression and enhance human potential through the therapeutic use of mindfulness.

The OMC Team does ground-breaking clinical and neuroscience research on mindfulness.  It assesses the efficacy of different forms of mindfulness practice for different types of problem, and is building up a peer-reviewed body of knowledge about what forms of  mindfulness intervention best suits which type of person.

OMC is developing mindfulness-based approaches to meet the needs of specific situations and cultures around the world. In this connection it has links with partners in Asia and Africa.

OMC applies mindfulness techniques to patients with mental and physical problems and monitors outcomes. Its main focus is on serious recurrent depression and its consequences. Patients are taught how to apply mindfulness to forestall, minimise or alleviate recurrent episodes of their illness.

Practitioners from various disciplines (e.g. psychologists, teachers, physicians) are taught mindfulness so they can apply them to people for whom they have a duty of care.

OMC works to spread knowledge of its findings to as wide an audience as possible. There is great potential that widespread availability will have a beneficial effect on the general population, not just those who are diagnosed unwell.