Mindfulness-oriented Meditation Research Articles

Guilt and Shame As a Result of Violating Beliefs: “Moral Injury”

This study on moral injury, which has a content as old as the history of humanity, is believed to contribute significantly to the relevant literature. Despite the limited number of sources in the literature on the subject, which are mostly related to veterans with war experience or limited to the field of religious psychology, this study is expected to fill the gap and provide valuable insights. The study attempted to clarify the distinction between moral injury, which involves a psychological injury caused by a dilemma, and post-traumatic stress disorder, which shares similar features with moral injury and arises after experiencing a traumatic event. As part of this study, psychotherapy approaches within the scope of interventions for the symptoms of moral injury were also included and the issue was tried to be addressed from a mental health perspective. In this context, “mindfulness-oriented meditation”, “self- compassion”, “spiritually-oriented counseling”, and “work focused on forgiving oneself and others”, whose effectiveness has been tested, are included. The issue of moral injury was addressed with psychology- spirituality dimensions; the scope of the study was further expanded with intervention-treatment titles. This study summarizes moral injury’s conceptual framework and focuses on interventions and treatment approaches. As a result, the concept of moral injury was addressed holistically and contributed to the conceptual framework.

Effects of risk exposure on emotional distress among Chinese adults during the COVID-19 pandemic: The moderating role of disruption of life and perceived controllability.

COVID-19 affects not only the physical health of individuals but also their mental health and different types of risk exposures are believed to have different effects on individual emotional distress. This study explores the relationships between risk exposure, disruption of life, perceived controllability, and emotional distress among Chinese adults during the COVID-19 outbreak. This study is based on an online survey conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, from 1 to 10 February 2020, with a total of 2,993 Chinese respondents recruited through convenience and snowball sampling. Multiple linear regression analysis were used to examine the relationships among risk exposure, disruption of life, perceived controllability, and emotional distress. This study found that all types of risk exposures were significantly associated with emotional distress. Individuals with neighborhood infection, family member infection/close contact, and self-infection/close contact had higher levels of emotional distress (B = 0.551, 95% CI: -0.019, 1.121; B = 2.161, 95% CI: 1.067, 3.255; B = 3.240, 95% CI: 2.351, 4.129) than those without exposure. The highest levels of emotional distress occurred among individuals experiencing self-infection/close contact, while the lowest levels of emotional distress occurred among individuals experiencing neighborhood infection and the moderate levels of emotional distress occurred among individuals experiencing family member infection (Beta = 0.137; Beta = 0.073; Beta = 0.036). Notably, the disruption of life aggravated the effect of self-infection/close contact on emotional distress and family member infection/close contact on emotional distress (B = 0.217, 95% CI: 0.036, 0.398; B = 0.205, 95% CI: 0.017, 0.393). More importantly, perceived controllability lowered the strength of the association between self-infection/close contact and emotional distress, as well as family member infection/close contact and emotional distress (B = -0.180, 95% CI: -0.362, 0.002; B = -0.187, 95% CI: -0.404, 0.030). These findings shed light on mental health interventions for people exposed to or infected with COVID-19 near the beginning of the pandemic, particularly those who themselves had COVID or had family members with COVID-19 risk exposure, including being infected/having close contact with an infected person. We call for appropriate measures to screen out individuals or families whose lives were, or remain, more severely affected by COVID-19. We advocate providing individuals with material support and online mindfulness-based interventions to help them cope with the after-effects of COVID-19. It is also essential to enhance the public's perception of controllability with the help of online psychological intervention strategies, such as mindfulness-based stress reduction programs and mindfulness-oriented meditation training programs.

Effects of Mind-Body Interventions on Adolescents' Cooperativeness and Emotional Symptoms.

Background: Mind-body interventions may support the development of adolescents’ self-regulation and provide a protective effect against maladaptive outcomes, e.g., internalizing and externalizing problems. The present study aimed at evaluating the effects of mindfulness-oriented meditation training (MOM) and autogenic training (AT) on a group of healthy Italian adolescents’ character dimensions, emotional and behavioral difficulties. Methods: 72 adolescents were randomly assigned to MOM/AT conditions and tested before and after the 8-week trainings through self-report measures (Temperament and Character Inventory 125, TCI; Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire for Adolescents, SDQ-A). Main analyses involved robust and repeated measures ANOVAs, carried out separately for character TCI and SDQ-A scales. Results: After trainings, we found increased levels of cooperativeness and reduced emotional symptoms. Changes in these dimensions were negatively correlated: the more participants increased in their cooperativeness the greater decrease they showed in emotional symptoms. Conclusion: Both MOM and AT enhanced a cooperative attitude in adolescents and helped reducing their emotional problems. Therefore, it may be useful to apply these mind-body interventions in school settings as they can have a protective effect on the well-being and psychosocial adjustment of youths, through fostering their character maturity and helping them to better regulate their emotions.

Inter-brain co-activations during mindfulness meditation. Implications for devotional and clinical settings

Mindfulness meditation usually takes place as personal, introspective activity. It is not known if this practice activates the brain differently when done alone or with someone else.Sixteen couples of expert meditators performed mindfulness-oriented meditation (MOM) and instructed mind-wandering (IMW) tasks in two conditions: once sitting in the same room (SR) and once in two different rooms (DR). Spontaneous electroencephalographic (EEG) data was collected during 7-minute recording sessions in the four experimental settings (MOM/SR, MOM/DR, IMW/SR, IMW/DR). Power in band was computed in separate clusters of independent components of the EEG signals.In addition to significant task effects, found in frontolimbic (MOM > IMW in gamma) and frontoparietal locations (MOM < IMW in theta), significant condition effects were found in frontal (SR > DR in delta) and in temporo-occipital regions (SR > DR in theta and alpha). Moreover, a significant interaction between task and condition revealed higher gamma activity in limbic areas during MOM/SR vs. MOM/DR settings. This effect was not attributable to gender, age nor the meditation expertise of participants.We thus show that the brains of two people work differently when they are doing something together or alone; some of these differences are specific to mindfulness meditation. Implications for devotional and clinical settings are discussed.

A Multilevel Approach to Explore the Wandering Mind and Its Connections with Mindfulness and Personality.

We propose an innovative approach to study Mind Wandering (MW), and we present an application of this methodology to study the effects of a Mindfulness-Oriented Meditation (MOM) training. We assessed individuals’ MW through a free association task and an attentional task with thought-probes combined with a questionnaire for the phenomenological characteristic of each MW episode. We used the Temperament and Character Inventory to assess participants’ personality traits and their associations with measures of MW. Our study was limited by the course of the Covid-19 pandemic and only nine healthy young individuals completed the testing sessions, which were carried out before and after the MOM training. After MOM, participants showed fewer repetitive and self-relevant thoughts and indices of better performance in the attentional task; the linguistic analysis of participants’ free associations showed lower verbal productivity and a decrease in utterances that expressed anxiety/stress. Overall, we foresee that future studies could replicate our preliminary findings with larger samples and in a period without a global health emergency. This multilevel approach to the study of MW may allow researchers to gain a broader view of the phenomenon, considering its occurrence, qualitative characteristics, impact on cognitive tasks, malleability via mindfulness or other psychological interventions, and relations with personality traits.

Mindfulness Meditation Leads To Increased Dispositional Mindfulness And Interoceptive Awareness Linked To A Reduced Dissociative Tendency

ABSTRACT Dissociation is an involuntary defensive mechanism to protect oneself by avoiding unbearable internal conflicts or overwhelming emotions. Cultivating mindful awareness could allow the development of voluntary processes that can offer part of the self-protective function of dissociation while favoring internal integration processes. The aim of the present study was to explore the effects of a 7-week Mindfulness Oriented Meditation (MOM) training on healthy individuals’ self-reported dissociative experience, mindfulness skills and interoceptive awareness. After the training, in comparison to a waiting-list control group (N = 102), the MOM group (N = 110) showed reduced dissociative tendencies (p < .05), increased dispositional mindfulness (p < .001) and increased interoceptive awareness (in the aspects of not-worrying, self-regulation and body listening; p < .001). Moreover, correlational evidence showed that the more MOM participants increased in mindfulness skills after the training the more they reported increased interoceptive awareness and decreased dissociative functioning (p < .05). Mindfulness skills also improved with more home meditation practice executed by MOM participants (p < .05). These findings were attributed to a possible role of mindfulness meditation in enabling the development of volitional processes that afford psychological safety and integration, in contrast with the involuntary nature of dissociation.

Clinical application of mindfulness-oriented meditation in children with ADHD: a preliminary study on sleep and behavioral problems

Objective High incidence of sleep problems in children and adolescents with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) has been described. Mindfulness meditation has emerged as a novel approach to sleep disturbances and insomnia remediation. This preliminary study tested the efficacy of Mindfulness-Oriented Meditation (MOM) training on sleep quality and behavioral problems in children with ADHD. Design Twenty-five children with ADHD aged 7-11 years underwent two programs three times per week for eight-weeks: the MOM training (15 children) and an Active Control Condition (10 children). Main Outcome Measures Objective and subjective measures of sleep quality and behavioral measures were collected before and after the programs. Results Positive effects on sleep and behavioral measures were found only in the MOM group. Conclusion Although they are preliminary, our results indicate that MOM training is a promising tool for ameliorating sleep quality and behavioral manifestations in ADHD.

Clinical Application of Mindfulness-Oriented Meditation: A Preliminary Study in Children with ADHD

Mindfulness-oriented meditation (MOM) is a self-regulatory training used for attentional and behavioral problems. With its focus on attention, MOM is a promising form of training that is gaining empirical support as a complementary or alternative intervention for attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). In this study, we tested the preliminary efficacy of MOM training in children with ADHD, by comparing its efficacy with an active control condition (Emotion Education Program, EEP). Twenty-five children with ADHD aged 7–11 years participated in MOM training (n = 15) or EEP (n = 10) 3 times per week for 8 weeks. Neuropsychological and academic measures and behavioral, emotional, and mindfulness ratings were collected before and after the two programs. On average, MOM training had positive effects on neuropsychological measures, as evidenced by a significant mean improvement in all outcome measures after training. Moreover, positive effects on ADHD symptoms were found only in the MOM group. Although they are preliminary, our results documented that MOM training promotes changes in neuropsychological measures and in certain behavioral symptoms, suggesting it as a promising tool for ameliorating cognitive and clinical manifestations of ADHD.

Positive Impact of Mindfulness Meditation on Mental Health of Female Teachers during the COVID-19 Outbreak in Italy.

The Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent public health measures were shown to impact negatively on people’s mental health. In particular, women were reported to be at higher risk than men of developing symptoms of stress/anxiety/depression, and resilience was considered a key factor for positive mental health outcomes. In the present study, a sample of Italian female teachers (n = 66, age: 51.5 ± 7.9 years) was assessed with self-report instruments one month before and one month after the start of the Covid-19 lockdown: mindfulness skills, empathy, personality profiles, interoceptive awareness, psychological well-being, emotional distress and burnout levels were measured. Meanwhile, they received an 8-week Mindfulness-Oriented Meditation (MOM) course, through two group meetings and six individual video-lessons. Based on baseline personality profiles, analyses of variance were performed in a low-resilience (LR, n = 32) and a high-resilience (HR, n = 26) group. The LR and HR groups differed at baseline in most of the self-report measures. Pre–post MOM significant improvements were found in both groups in anxiety, depression, affective empathy, emotional exhaustion, psychological well-being, interoceptive awareness, character traits and mindfulness levels. Improvements in depression and psychological well-being were higher in the LR vs. HR group. We conclude that mindfulness-based training can effectively mitigate the psychological negative consequences of the Covid-19 outbreak, helping in particular to restore well-being in the most vulnerable individuals.

‘Wasting time inside my mind’: Exploring student pharmacists’ perspectives on engaging in mindfulness oriented meditation using concepts from education research

Background: Pharmacy students are subject to high levels of stress. An emerging way student pharmacists and pharmacists have reported managing stress and developing professional resilience is through mindfulness. Objectives: To 1) describe how student pharmacists appraise the threat of stress; and 2) identify student perceptions of mindfulness-oriented meditation (MOM) as a stress management strategy and how MOM may fit in the pharmacy curriculum. Methods: A descriptive qualitative research study was conducted using focus groups comprised of first-year, second-year, and third- year pharmacy students at a college of pharmacy within the United States. A facilitation guide based on the study objectives was designed to guide focus group discussion and a basic interpretivist paradigm was used to underpin a phenomenological approach to interpreting the data. Representative quotes were identified by the authors to illustrate the main concepts from the focus groups. Results: In total, fourteen students participated across the three class-year focus groups. Students expressed a general interest in mindfulness, but their interest conflicted with feelings of business and time-constraints. Offering a certificate or other tangible reward made engaging in mindfulness and MOM more appealing. Conclusions: The concepts of the student’s academic perspective and learning motivation appear to influence mindfulness interest and reasons for participation. Colleges may need to change their criteria for judgment for wellness initiatives like MOM to be more widely adopted.

The role of self body brushing vs mindfulness meditation on interoceptive awareness: A non-randomized pilot study on healthy participants with possible implications for body image disturbances

IntroductionAdaptive interoceptive awareness has been revealed to be an important factor for mental health. Touch is one of the modalities through which we perceive bodily feelings. In this pilot study, self touch’s role in enhancing interoceptive awareness was investigated. It was tested by means of a Self Body Brushing (SBB) procedure, which entails self-administered brushing of the entire body. MethodsA pre vs. post three-arm design was used, with 49 healthy adult participants. The SBB training was delivered to a first group (N = 13) and a Mindfulness-Oriented Meditation (MOM) training to a second group (N = 15), considered as a reference intervention for promoting interoceptive awareness; a third group of inactive control participants (N = 14) was also included. Assessment included two self-report questionnaires: the Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness (MAIA) and the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS). ResultsIn several MAIA scales significant changes were observed: for Noticing, Attention regulation and Body listening, an overall improvement was observed, which was particularly due to changes in the active groups (SBB and MOM); Emotional awareness and Self-regulation scores increased more in the SBB group than in the other two groups. In the PSS measure, the changes in the active groups did not produce a statistically significant effect relative to the control group. ConclusionsSBB led to improvements in several aspects of self-reported interoceptive awareness at least as well as mindfulness meditation training. Further studies could investigate the potential effectiveness of SBB for promoting individual psychophysical health and well-being, in particular in the case of body image disturbances.

Considerations for the incorporation of mindfulness into pharmacy education

IntroductionA range of approaches are needed to bolster the mental health and well-being of pharmacists and student pharmacists. CommentaryIn recent years, medical and nursing educators have been training students to use mindfulness-oriented meditation (MOM) techniques such as Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) for mental health, wellness, and greater attention and presence. MOM training should be considered for incorporation into pharmacy education. Mindfulness can be included in the pharmacy curriculum in a variety of ways. These include introducing students to the topic didactically, encouraging and facilitating students to take an MBSR course, workshop, or online self-study, and integrating mindfulness through mindful moments during critical educational activities like product verification and communication assessments. ImplicationsMindfulness may be a valuable skill for student pharmacists, thus we encourage schools to expose students to the concepts of mindfulness and MOM techniques like MBSR. Additionally, more robust and rigorous research is needed to better understand the effects of MOM in different settings and contexts.

Effect of Mindfulness Meditation on Personality and Psychological Well-being in Patients with Multiple Sclerosis.

Varied evidence shows that mindfulness-oriented meditation improves individuals' mental health, positively influencing practitioners' personality profiles as well. A limited number of studies are beginning to show that this type of meditation may also be a helpful therapeutic option for persons with multiple sclerosis (MS). We evaluated the effects of an 8-week mindfulness-oriented meditation training on the personality profiles, anxiety and depression symptoms, and mindfulness skills of a group of patients with MS. A control group of patients with MS not enrolled in any training was also tested. After mindfulness-oriented meditation training, participants in this group (n = 15) showed an increase in character traits reflecting the maturity of the self at the intrapersonal (self-directedness) and interpersonal (cooperativeness) levels. Moreover, increased mindfulness and conscientiousness and decreased trait anxiety were observed in participants after the training. These data support the utility for patients with MS of therapeutic interventions based on mindfulness meditation that may lead to enhanced character and self-maturity.

Time Judgments as a Function of Mindfulness Meditation, Anxiety, and Mindfulness Awareness

The first aim of this study was to examine the differences in time judgments between meditators, who already possessed mindfulness-oriented meditation experience, and control subjects. The second was to examine the immediate effect of a long mindfulness meditation session (30 min) on the judgment of short stimulus durations (from 0.8 to 2.0 s). In addition, individual characteristics in terms of cognitive, affective (anxiety, arousal), and mindful awareness were assessed to investigate the relations between time judgments and individual states. The results showed no difference between the meditators and the controls on the different types of time judgment. The regular practice of meditation therefore did not change the judgment of passage of time or the judgment of short durations. However, the participants with a higher level of mindfulness awareness experienced a slowing down of the passage of time. In addition, the immediate effect of the mindfulness meditation session was to reduce the variability of temporal judgment in all participants. This improvement was linked, at least for the longest duration (2.0 s), to the decrease in anxiety and arousal levels as a result of the mindfulness session.

Mindfulness-Oriented Meditation for Primary School Children: Effects on Attention and Psychological Well-Being.

Mindfulness-based interventions are increasingly being used as methods to promote psychological well-being of clinical and non-clinical adult populations. Much less is known, however, on the feasibility of these forms of mental training on healthy primary school students. Here, we tested the effects of a mindfulness-meditation training on a group of 16 healthy children within 7–8 years of age from an Italian primary school. An active control condition focused on emotion awareness was employed on a group of 15 age-matched healthy children from the same school. Both programs were delivered by the same instructors three times per week, for 8 total weeks. The same main teacher of the two classes did not participate in the trainings but she completed questionnaires aimed at giving comprehensive pre-post training evaluations of behavior, social, emotion, and attention regulation skills in the children. A children’s self-report measure of mood and depressive symptoms was also used. From the teacher’s reports we found a specific positive effect of the mindfulness-meditation training in reducing attention problems and also positive effects of both trainings in reducing children’s internalizing problems. However, subjectively, no child in either group reported less depressive symptoms after the trainings. The findings were interpreted as suggestive of a positive effect of mindfulness-meditation on several children’s psychological well-being dimensions and were also discussed in light of the discrepancy between teacher and children’s reports. More generally, the results were held to speak in favor of the effectiveness of mindfulness-based interventions for healthy primary school children.

Psychological and physiological responses to stressful situations in immersive virtual reality: Differences between users who practice mindfulness meditation and controls

Several studies in the literature have shown positive psychophysical effects during or immediately after mindfulness meditation. However, the extent to which such positive effects are maintained in real-life, stressful contexts, remains unclear. This paper investigates the effects of an 8-week mindfulness-oriented meditation (MOM) program on the psychological and physiological responses evoked by immersive virtual environments (IVEs) that simulate emergency situations that may occur in life. Before and after the 8-week period, healthy MOM participants and a group of controls not involved in any meditation course were administered self-report measures of mindfulness and anxiety, and acted in the IVEs while a set of physiological parameters were recorded. Responses of MOM participants to the immersive virtual experiences were different from those of controls. MOM participants showed increased mindfulness and decreased anxiety levels. They also showed decreased heart rate and corrugator muscle activity while facing IVEs. We explain these results in terms of the awareness and acceptance components of mindfulness. More generally, the present experimental methods could also open up new lines of research that combine psychological and physiological indices with ecologically valid stimuli provided by IVEs in an effort to increase understanding of the impact of mindfulness meditation on realistic life situations.

Improving Personality/Character Traits in Individuals with Alcohol Dependence: The Influence of Mindfulness-Oriented Meditation

The study of personality is critical to enhance current knowledge of the psychological characteristics of alcohol dependence. Recent evidence shows that mindfulness-oriented meditation positively influences healthy individuals’ character. Here, it was assessed whether 8-week mindfulness-oriented meditation promotes similar changes in a group of alcohol-dependent individuals. A control group with alcohol dependence was also tested. Mindfulness-oriented meditation participants showed an increase in the character scores of the temperament and character inventory together with reduced risks of relapse. These longitudinal data highlight the importance of assessing personality in alcohol-dependent individuals and support the utility of therapeutic interventions for alcohol dependence aimed at enhancing individuals’ character.

Effects of an 8-week meditation program on the implicit and explicit attitudes toward religious/spiritual self-representations.

Explicit self-representations often conflict with implicit and intuitive self-representations, with such discrepancies being seen as a source of psychological tension. Most of previous research on the psychological effects of mindfulness-meditation has assessed people's self-attitudes at an explicit level, leaving unknown whether mindfulness-meditation promotes changes on implicit self-representations. Here, we assessed the changes in implicit and explicit self-related religious/spiritual (RS) representations in healthy participants following an 8-week mindfulness-oriented meditation (MOM) program. Before and after meditation, participants were administered implicit (implicit association test) and explicit (self-reported questionnaires) RS measures. Relative to control condition, MOM led to increases of implicit RS in individuals whit low pre-existing implicit RS and to more widespread increases in explicit RS. On the assumption that MOM practice may enhance the clarity of one's transcendental thoughts and feelings, we argued that MOM allows people to transform their intuitive feelings of implicit RS as well as their explicit RS attitudes.

Mindfulness-oriented meditation improves self-related character scales in healthy individuals

Previous studies have shown that mindfulness meditation may improve well-being in healthy individuals and be effective in the treatment of mental and neurological disorders. Here, we investigated the effects of an 8-week mindfulness-mediation program on the personality profiles of three groups of healthy individuals with no previous experience with meditation as compared to a control group not enrolled in any training. Personality profiles were obtained through the Temperament and Character Inventory (Cloninger et al., 1993). In the experimental groups, significant increments after the training were obtained in all the three character scales describing the levels of self maturity at the intrapersonal (Self-Directedness), interpersonal (Cooperativeness), and transpersonal (Self-Transcendence) levels. No changes were found in the control group. Strikingly, these effects were significant only in those groups who were engaged in consistent daily meditation practice but not in the group who attended the meditation training but were less consistent in home practice. Since higher scores in the character scales are associated to a lower risk of personality disorder, we propose that the increase of self maturity after the training may be an important mechanism for the effectiveness of mindfulness-oriented meditation in psychotherapeutic contexts.