What is the Compassionate Mindful Resilience programme?
Working in partnership, Kidney Care UK, Queen’s University Belfast and MindfulnessUK have established a free mindfulness programme developed by Mindfulness UK for people with Stage 4 or 5 kidney disease or who have received a kidney transplant.
The programme being piloted will be helping to shape the way that support is available to kidney patients in the future. The anonymised data from this course will be collected as part of a larger feasibility research study. This will be used by researchers to gauge how helpful the programme has been and to work out its potential to help provide emotional wellbeing support in the future, alongside existing support services already provided by Kidney Care UK.

Registration for the CMR Programme has now closed
Thank you for your interest in the Compassionate Mindful Resilience programme for people living with kidney disease study. We have received an overwhelming number of applications and unfortunately registration to take part in the study has now closed.
We hope to run a larger study in the future which will include a wider range of people living with kidney disease and their carers, so please keep a look out for more opportunities to learn mindfulness in the future.
If you are currently experiencing a severe period of anxiety, depression, mental illness, addiction recent bereavement or a traumatic life event we would encourage you to make contact with your GP, renal care team or if you are having a difficult time please contact the Samaritans.
At Kidney Care UK we believe that no-one should face kidney disease alone and are here to provide practical advice, emotional support, and financial assistance.
We can help you with a range of issues relating to kidney disease including treatment options, welfare and benefits, emotional support, and dialysis away from base. As you would expect the advocacy service is sensitive, compassionate, and completely confidential. We will work with you one-to-one and if necessary, we can arrange further support offered by Kidney Care UK including our telephone counselling service and financial grants programme. Financial support is available to those on a low income and can help to pay for household items, travel expenses and towards training courses.
You can also find mental health information and support on our website.

Learning to enhance your overall wellbeing
Learning to be kinder to yourself and build emotional resilience does not mean that you won’t experience stress or emotional upheaval, but you can learn skills that may help you work through emotional pain and develop techniques which may help you cope with feelings of depression or anxiety to enhance your overall wellbeing.
What is mindfulness?
Mindfulness is a skill that we can learn and practice to improve our overall wellbeing. While it can’t prevent us from experiencing stress or emotional upheaval, it can help us manage our reactions and responses to everyday living and difficult events.
Is mindfulness the same as psychotherapy?
Although mindfulness and psychotherapy can be complementary practices, mindfulness is not a replacement for psychotherapy.
Psychotherapy tends to focus on “self in relationship to others”, whereas mindfulness primarily examines “self in relationship to self”. It can provide personal learning on how to be more aware of thoughts, feelings, emotions, surroundings, and situations, and how to reduce automatic responses.
