Exploring Evidence for Mindfulness and Subjective Wellbeing Homeostatic Resilience Buffering Depression and Stress Symptoms Associated with Inflammatory Bowel Disease

People with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) are known to experience high levels of psychological symptoms, associated with low subjective wellbeing (SWB). Most existing research assumes such relationships are linear. An alternative proposition comes from the theory of SWB homeostasis. This proposes a resilience effect, where SWB levels resist rising levels of challenge. The non-linear proposition was tested using generalized additive models (GAMs). The sample comprised people with Crohn’s disease (CD: n = 461) and ulcerative colitis (UC: n = 277). Psychological symptoms (depression and stress), patient-reported disease symptoms, and levels of trait mindfulness were modelled to predict levels of homeostatically protected mood (HPMood), which is the core affective component of SWB. There was some evidence of a resilience effect buffering against depression symptoms for the CD cohort. Within this sample, the curve emerged for HPMood at around 60 percentage points. There was no evidence of this resilience effect within the UC cohort, nor was resilience apparent in the models exploring psychological stress or IBD symptoms. There was some tentative support for the role of trait mindfulness in supporting HPMood, but this was again only for the cohort of people with CD. The implications of these results are discussed.