BackgroundIt has been suggested that mindfulness is a protective factor that buffers individuals from experiencing severe posttraumatic stress following exposure to a trauma.We aimed to examine the association between dispositional (trait) mindfulness and posttraumatic stress in individuals who had been exposed to the trauma of a natural disaster.MethodA disaster group (n = 25) consisting of Norwegian tourists who survived the 2004 South East Asian tsunami at a location with high mortality rates was recruited. Dispositional mindfulness and posttraumatic stress were measured with the Five-Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire and the Impact of Event Scale-Revised Version, respectively.ResultsThere was no significant association between mindfulness and posttraumatic stress. Moreover, there were no significant associations between posttraumatic stress and the mindfulness sub-facets of observing, acting with awareness, non-judging, and non-reacting. However, there was a significant positive correlation between the descriptive factor of mindfulness and IES-R total. There were no significant linear correlations between the five sub-facets of mindfulness and the three categories of posttraumatic symptoms, intrusion, avoidance and hyper-arousal.ConclusionsOur findings do not indicate a relationship between dispositional mindfulness and posttraumatic stress levels after exposure to a trauma, except for the descriptive sub-facet of mindfulness and here the correlation is positive and not negative as would be expected if mindfulness is a protective factor for posttraumatic stress. Future studies should investigate the relationship between mindfulness and posttraumatic stress while accounting for factors such as trauma history, type of trauma, and individual differences in traumatic stress reactions.

Mindfulness involves various attention skills, including the ability to sustain and focus attention. We investigated the association between trait mindfulness and errors of omission and commission in a sustained attention task in individuals who had been exposed to the trauma of a natural disaster. A positive association between mindfulness and sustained attention was hypothesized. A disaster-exposed group (n=25) consisting of Norwegian tourists who survived the 2004 Southeast Asian tsunami in a location with high mortality rates was recruited. A control group (n=24) matched for gender, age and educational level was included in the study. Trait mindfulness and sustained attention were measured with the Five-Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ) and the Conner's Continuous Performance Test (CPT II) respectively. In the disaster-exposed group but not in the control group, there was a significant negative association between mindfulness and number of commission errors that was observed with linear regression after adjustment for gender, age, years of education, depression, anxiety, intelligence quotient (IQ), and amount of post-traumatic stress symptoms. To examine the associations between the five factors of mindfulness: observing, describing, acting with awareness, nonjudging and non-reacting, and the number of CPT II omission and commission errors, linear regressions with adjustment for gender, age and years of education were applied. There was a significant negative association between number of commission errors and the describing factor of mindfulness in the disaster-exposed group, but not in the control group. There was a strong negative association between the factor of non-reacting and number of omission errors in the control group, and a weaker but still significant negative association between the factor of nonjudging and number of omission errors in the control group. There was also a strong positive association between number of commission errors and the observing factor of mindfulness in the control group. The study shows that the association between sustained attention and mindfulness and its different aspects may be affected by disaster exposure.

Amniocentesis and culturing of amniotic fluid cells were performed in the sixteenth week of two subsequent pregnancies in a woman who had previously given birth to two children with metachromatic leucodystrophy. On both occasions, amniotic fluid cells deficient in arylsulphatase A were found and the diagnosis was confirmed in the aborted fetuses.