Cultivating Emotional Balance in Professional Caregivers: a Pilot Intervention

Abstract

Cultivating Emotional Balance (CEB) is an evidenced-based Mindfulness and Compassion-Based Intervention (MCBI) designed to reduce destructive, negative emotional experiences toward oneself and others and to promote skills for experiencing and expressing emotions constructively. The aim of this pilot study was to run a CEB program for professional caregivers of patients with intellectual disability (n = 19, 18 female, mean age = 40.47). Psychometrically validated instruments for the assessment of mindfulness, self-care, emotion regulation, and self-compassion were used. Within the pilot data, preliminary multivariate analysis of variance pointed in the direction of meaningful increases in both the five facets of mindfulness and de-centering. Additional analyses suggest that the pilot intervention can improve self-care self-compassion while reducing symptoms of depression, anxiety, panic, and somatized illness. The pilot findings suggest that CEB may not only help to enhance the regulation of emotional states but could also be associated with improvement of mindfulness, self-care, and self-compassion. New interventions with a randomized control design are encouraged to further examine the benefits of the MCBI with this important population of caregivers supporting people with intellectual disabilities.