Neuroscience education as a tool for improving stress management and resilience

Abstract

Beliefs about stress and coping can play a major role in mental health and resilience. For example, holding a belief that stress or emotions are controllable can improve resilience. One emerging strategy for shifting beliefs and enhancing resilience is neuroscience education (neuroeducation or NeuroEd). This paper proposes a NeuroEd model of building resilience in which learning about how the brain regulates internal states such as stress and emotions can boost resilience by shifting beliefs. Support for the model comes in part from growing evidence in pain management demonstrating that neuroeducation can help reduce pain and disability, with recent evidence that it can also impact beliefs. This paper concludes by introducing a framework for translating neuroeducation for pain management into neuroeducation for the management of other internal states, including fear and anxiety, cravings in addiction, and stress broadly.