Mindfulness May Shield University Students From Internalised Stigma and Low Mood

A new longitudinal study from Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University suggests that mindfulness, the capacity to pay deliberate, non-judgemental attention to the present moment, may help university students from minority backgrounds avoid internalising the stigma directed at them, while also easing depressive symptoms over time. The research, published in the journal Mindfulness, followed mainland Chinese students living in Hong Kong across an academic year and found that those who reported higher levels of mindfulness at the outset subsequently reported lower levels of self-stigma and fewer symptoms of depression months later. The findings add a potentially important dimension to debates about how best to protect the mental health of minority students, pointing not only at the prejudice itself but at how individuals come to absorb and reproduce it internally.

Stigma is often described as a social wound, but its most damaging effects can occur after the initial injury. When people are repeatedly made to feel different, lesser, or unwanted because of a perceived lower status or value, they may begin to internalise those beliefs, a process researchers call self-stigma. Unlike external discrimination, which can at least be named and contested, internalised stigma takes the form of deeply held negative self-perceptions, including convictions of personal inadequacy and social failure. Previous research has consistently linked this internalisation to deteriorating mental health over time, making it a significant target for intervention, particularly among student populations navigating the pressures of academic life alongside the strains of minority status.

The study focused on a group whose minority status is often invisible at first glance. The participants were 194 university students from the Chinese mainland who resided in Hong Kong. In the 2023/24 academic year, such students numbered more than 17,900, making up over 17 percent of the total student population. Although they share cultural and physical proximity with the host population, that closeness does not shield them from persistent stereotyping or other forms of stigma. Dr Rebecca Cheung, the corresponding author from XJTLU’s Academy of Future Education, noted that these students may experience what researchers describe as invisible stigma, a form of exclusion that others may not immediately notice but that can nonetheless be absorbed and internalised by those who experience it.

What distinguishes this study from much of the existing literature is its design. A large share of research on stigma and mental health is cross-sectional, capturing data at a single moment in time, which makes it impossible to determine whether stigma precedes poor mental health or follows from it. To address this limitation, the researchers invited students to complete a pen-and-paper survey three times over nine to ten months, with a four-month lag between each round. Dr Cheung explained that collecting data over time allowed the team to establish the directionality of effects and to understand whether stigma or mindfulness was longitudinally related to mental health outcomes. This prospective structure means the study can speak to how earlier mindfulness predicts later self-stigma and depression, rather than merely showing that the variables coexist.

Mindfulness, as defined in the research literature, is an awareness that arises from intentionally paying attention to the present moment without judgment. The study found that students who were more mindful tended to report lower levels of self-stigma months later. According to Dr Cheung, when someone is able to be present and non-judgemental, the researchers found them to have a lower level of self-stigma, and this lowered self-stigma was in turn associated with better well-being. The mechanism is intuitively compelling: stigma operates by convincing individuals that negative stereotypes reflect their true worth, but a mindful stance creates a small but crucial distance between the person and the thought, allowing prejudiced messages, whether from outside or from within, to be observed rather than automatically accepted.

The benefits extended beyond self-stigma to mood. Students who scored higher on mindfulness at the beginning of the study reported significantly fewer depressive symptoms several months later, a pattern the researchers link to mindfulness’s well-established role in interrupting the ruminative thought cycles that characterise depression. Rumination, the repetitive replaying of negative thoughts and feelings, is one of the most robust psychological predictors of depressive episodes, and mindfulness-based practices are thought to work in part by training attention away from these loops and toward present-moment experience. For students juggling academic demands, financial pressures, and the subtle exclusions of minority life, that capacity to disengage from rumination may represent a meaningful protective resource.

Not every result fit the expected pattern, however. Contrary to previous research, self-stigma did not forecast depressive symptoms among the students over time. Those who reported a higher level of self-stigma at the outset were no more likely to report more depressive symptoms than those with lower levels. Dr Cheung acknowledged that the null finding was a little surprising, because a lot of existing studies show that stigma is linked to anxiety or depression, yet in this study that relationship did not emerge. The researchers point to several possible explanations, including the relatively short interval between measurement points and the possibility that participants in this sample had low baseline depression levels, leaving limited room for stigma-driven deterioration to appear within the study window.

The authors are careful about what the study does and does not demonstrate. Although the research did not indicate an exact causal relationship between mindfulness and lower self-stigma, it does not rule one out either. One plausible explanation is that when someone is more mindful, distancing themselves from the situation and pausing before reacting, they create options to respond differently to public or self-stigma. As Dr Cheung put it, when we have a wider range of responses available to us, we are free to choose whatever seems the most skilful or helpful, and that can change our mental health. In psychological terms, mindfulness may expand the behavioural repertoire, replacing automatic acceptance of stigmatising messages with considered, flexible responses that protect both identity and mood.

The practical implications could be considerable. These findings may be applied to improve the mental health of minority groups, and the researchers suggest that, in addition to combating the stigma held by the majority, applied researchers and practitioners may consider addressing the internalisation of stigma by incorporating mindfulness into their interventions, teaching techniques such as mindfulness meditation. Such approaches would complement existing anti-discrimination efforts by equipping individuals with internal resources to resist absorbing prejudice, rather than relying solely on changing the behaviour of others. For universities hosting large minority student populations, mindfulness-based programmes could offer a relatively scalable, low-cost addition to counselling and support services.

The study, titled Prospective Relations Among Mindfulness, Self-Stigma, and Mental Health Outcomes: A Study of Mainland Chinese University Students in Hong Kong, was published on 14 August 2026 and used a survey method with people as the subject of research. The authors declare no competing interests. While the sample was drawn from a single minority student population and the follow-up period spanned less than a year, the prospective design strengthens the case that mindfulness is not merely a byproduct of good mental health but may actively shape how students respond to stigma over time. Future research with longer follow-up periods, more diverse samples, and experimental interventions will be needed to confirm the causal pathways, but for now the message is a hopeful one: the way students attend to their present moment may help determine how much of society’s prejudice they carry within.

Subject of Research: Longitudinal relationships among mindfulness, self-stigma, and depressive symptoms in minority university students

Article Title: Is mindfulness linked to better mental health and lower self-stigma among university students?

Article References: Is mindfulness linked to better mental health and lower self-stigma among university students?. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: mindfulness, self-stigma, depression, university students, minority students, mental health, longitudinal study, Hong Kong, mainland Chinese students, rumination, stigma internalisation, well-being