Yale Wellness Project

The Yale College Emotional Intelligence project aims to highlight the beneficial impact of wellness programs for Yale students. The investigators will examine the benefits of 3 empirically-validated programs (Emotional Intelligence, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) \& SKY Yoga Breathing) for Yale students on measures of general well-being (e.g. perceived stress, gratitude etc). The study will also include a no-treatment control group as a comparative measure to the well-being programs. The goal of the study is to show how each program benefits student well-being over time. Pre-intervention and post-intervention data will be collected. The hypothesis is that all 3 workshops will decrease stress and improve well-being and that the manner in which each workshop will do so may be different (e.g. MBSR will benefit student well-being by increasing mindfulness and self-compassion whereas Emotional Intelligence may benefit student well-being by improving cognitive emotion regulation). Given the current state of mental health challenges and stress on college campuses, the goal of this randomized-controlled trial is to strengthen the literature on wellness programs for students and to show that student well-being can significantly increase through effective interventions.