Parental Reflective Capacities: A Scoping Review of Mindful Parenting and Parental Reflective Functioning
Two key parental reflective capacities-mindful parenting (MP) and parental reflective functioning (PRF) - have been shown to promote healthy parent-child relationships through parents' increased sensitivity and responsiveness to their children's needs in spite of parenting stressors. Despite the theoretical overlap between these two constructs, researchers have continued to examine them independently. Therefore, the purpose of this scoping review was to review the overlapping and distinctive outcomes and correlates in the empirical MP and PRF literatures.
Understanding the Implementation of Informal Meditation Practice in a Smartphone-Based Intervention: A Qualitative Analysis
Informal practice (i.e., brief meditation practices incorporated spontaneously into daily activities) may be important for increasing the efficacy and accessibility of meditation-based interventions (MedBIs). However, the facilitators and barriers to engaging in informal practice are largely unknown. The current study aimed to investigate factors associated with the implementation of informal practice.
At-home use of app-based mindfulness for children: A randomized active-controlled trial
School-based mindfulness interventions in children have shown benefits to child well-being. Here, we investigated the effectiveness of a remote, app-based mindfulness intervention for promoting well-being in children.
Visualizing Compassion: Episodic Simulation as Contemplative Practice
Contemplative interventions designed to cultivate compassion are receiving increasing empirical attention. Accumulating evidence suggests that these interventions bolster prosocial motivation and warmth towards others. Less is known about how these practices impact compassion in everyday life. Here we consider one mechanistic pathway through which compassion practices may impact perception and action in the world: . Evidence suggests that vividly imagining a situation simulates that experience in the brain as if it were, to a degree, actually happening. Thus, we hypothesize that simulation during imagery-based contemplative practices can construct sensorimotor patterns in the brain that prime an individual to act compassionately in the world. We first present evidence across multiple literatures in Psychology that motivates this hypothesis, including the neuroscience of mental imagery and the emerging literature on prosocial episodic simulation. Then, we examine the specific contemplative practices in compassion-based interventions that may construct such simulations. We conclude with future directions for investigating how compassion-based interventions may shape prosocial perception and action in everyday life.
The Language of Compassion: Hospital Chaplains' Compassion Capacity Reduces Patient Depression via Other-Oriented, Inclusive Language
Although hospital chaplains play a critical role in delivering emotional and spiritual care to a broad range of both religious and non-religious patients, there is remarkably little research on the best practices or "active ingredients" of chaplain spiritual consults. Here, we examined how chaplains' compassion capacity was associated with their linguistic behavior with hospitalized inpatients, and how their language in turn related to patient outcomes.
Mental and Physical Health Impacts of Mindfulness Training for College Undergraduates: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials
Universities increasingly offer mindfulness-based programs (MBPs) to improve student health and reduce their impact on overburdened psychological services. It is critical for evidence-based policy to determine for what health outcomes mindfulness programs are effective and under what conditions. Objectives were to: (a) perform a comprehensive analysis of the effects of mindfulness interventions on physical, mental, and behavioral health outcomes in college undergraduate students, and (b) examine moderators of intervention effects to identify factors that may help improve existing university mindfulness programs and guide the design of new programs.
Meditation and Cognitive Outcomes: A Longitudinal Analysis Using Data From the Health and Retirement Study 2000-2016
We aimed to assess the association between meditation practice and cognitive function over time among middle-aged and older adults.
Effects of Self-Compassion Interventions on Reducing Depressive Symptoms, Anxiety, and Stress: A Meta-Analysis
A growing body of evidence shows self-compassion can play a key role in alleviating depressive symptoms, anxiety, and stress in various populations. Interventions fostering self-compassion have recently received increased attention. This meta-analysis aimed to identify studies that measured effects of self-compassion focused interventions on reducing depressive symptoms, anxiety, and stress.
An Online Mindfulness Program for Teachers: A Feasibility Study of the DeStress Monday at School Program
Stress has deleterious effects on teachers' well-being and interactions with students. While in-person mindfulness programs have demonstrated benefits for teachers' mental health, in-person classes are often not feasible due to teachers' busy schedules. This study assessed four components of feasibility (implementation, demand, acceptability, and limited-efficacy testing) for an online mindfulness intervention for teachers.
Mindfulness in Politics: A Qualitative Study on Mindfulness Training in the UK Parliament
While mindfulness in the workplace has received substantial scientific attention in the past decades, it is not yet well-understood if, under what circumstances, and in what ways mindfulness training may be helpful for individuals working in political environments. The aim of this study was to explore the experience of mindfulness training among British politicians, as well as mindfulness facilitators who had taught mindfulness to politicians in the UK Parliament.
Classic psychedelic use and current meditation practice
Previous research has investigated potential synergies between classic psychedelics and meditation practice, but relatively little remains known about the relationship between classic psychedelic experiences and engagement with meditation practice.The purpose of this study was to investigate associations between classic psychedelic experiences and engagement with two popular types of meditation: mindfulness meditation and loving-kindness or compassion meditation.
Meditation Practice, Mindfulness, and Pain-Related Outcomes in Mindfulness-Based Treatment for Episodic Migraine
Mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) have emerged as promising prophylactic episodic migraine treatments. The present study investigated biopsychosocial predictors and outcomes associated with formal, daily-life meditation practice in migraine patients undergoing MBI, and whether augmented mindfulness mechanistically underlies change.
Is Mindfulness Associated With Safer Cannabis Use? A Latent Profile Analysis of Dispositional Mindfulness Among College Students Who Use Cannabis
Previous research cites mindfulness as a protective factor against risky substance use, but the specific association between dispositional mindfulness (DM) and cannabis use has been inconsistent. Despite known heterogeneity of DM facets across college students, much of the prior research in this area has relied on variable-centered approaches. Only a handful of prior studies within the cannabis literature have utilized person-centered approaches, and only one has specifically examined unique profiles of dispositional mindfulness in relation to patterns of use among college students.
Intensive Mindfulness Meditation Reduces Frequency and Burden of Migraine: An Unblinded Single-Arm Trial
Preventing migraine headaches and improving the quality of life for patients with migraine remains a challenge. We hypothesized intensive meditation training would reduce the disease burden of migraine.
The Mindful Reappraisal of Pain Scale (MRPS): Validation of a New Measure of Psychological Mechanisms of Mindfulness-Based Analgesia
Mindfulness is theorized to decrease the affective amplification of chronic pain by facilitating a shift from emotionally-laden, catastrophic pain appraisals of nociceptive input to reappraising chronic pain as an innocuous sensory signal that does not signify harm. Understanding of these hypothetical psychological mechanisms of mindfulness-based analgesia has been limited by a lack of direct measures. We conducted a series of psychometric and experimental studies to develop and validate the Mindful Reappraisal of Pain Sensations Scale (MPRS).
What Happens When You Smoke a Cigarette Mindfully? A Deductive Qualitative Study
The mindful smoking exercise instructs participants to pay attention to a range of experiences while smoking a cigarette with the expectation that it will modify the often automatic process of smoking. Given its theoretical value, mindfulness- and acceptance and commitment therapy-based smoking cessation interventions have usually included a mindful smoking exercise. However, its utility has not been empirically examined. Through qualitative analyses, the current study examined smokers' lived experience with mindful smoking during an 8-week telehealth group-based smoking cessation and alcohol modification trial.
Testing the Mindfulness-to-Meaning Theory in Daily Life
The Mindfulness-to-Meaning Theory (MMT) describes the processes through which mindfulness leads to enhanced eudaimonic wellbeing (indirectly via mediating processes such as increased decentering, reappraisal, positive affect, and savoring), but little is currently known about how these processes impact one another over short time periods (e.g., across several hours). The current study tested the MMT by measuring these variables repeatedly as they occur naturalistically in daily life.
Ultra-Brief Breath Counting (Mindfulness) Training Abolishes Negative Affect-Induced Alcohol Motivation in Hazardous Community Drinkers
Mindfulness therapy improves drinking outcomes arguably by attenuating negative mood-induced drinking, but this mechanism has not been demonstrated in hazardous community drinkers. To address this, three studies tested whether a key ingredient of mindfulness, breath counting, would attenuate the increase in motivation for alcohol produced by experimentally induced negative mood, in hazardous community drinkers.
Believing in the Powers of Mindfulness: A Thematic Narrative Approach and the Development of a New Scale
The beliefs and expectations people bring into mindfulness practice can affect the measurement outcomes of interventions. The aim of this mixed-method study was to examine the key beliefs in the powers of mindfulness-understood as non-judgmental awareness of the present moment-to transform the individual and the society, and to develop and validate the Belief in the Powers of Mindfulness Scale (BPMS).
The State- and Trait-Level Effects and Candidate Mechanisms of Four Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) Practices: Two Exploratory Studies
The primary aim was to explore state- and trait-level effects and candidate mechanisms of four Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) practices.
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Health Insurance Coverage: If, How, and When? An Integrated Knowledge Translation (iKT) Delphi Key Informant Analysis
Hundreds of trials have evaluated Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), but in the United States, it is generally not covered by health insurance. Consequently, the aims were to identify the following: (1) key questions to make decisions about , , and MBSR should be covered by health insurance; (2a) barriers and (2b) facilitators to understand and resolve for MBSR to be covered by health insurance; and (3) highest priority evidence needed to inform health insurance coverage decisions.