Meditation in Stressed Older Adults: Improvements in Self-Rated Mental Health Not Paralleled by Improvements in Cognitive Function or Physiological Measures

Abstract

To determine if mindfulness meditation (MM) in older adults improves cognition and, secondarily, if MM improves mental health and physiology, 134 at least mildly stressed 50–85 year olds were randomized to a six-week MM intervention or a waitlist control. Outcome measures were assessed at baseline and two months later at Visit 2. The primary outcome measure was an executive function/attentional measure (flanker task). Other outcome measures included additional cognitive assessments, salivary cortisol, respiratory rate, heart rate variability, Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS), Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression (CESD), Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), Neuroticism-Extraversion-Openness (NEO) personality traits, and SF-36 health-related quality of life. 128 participants completed the study though Visit 2 assessments. There was no significant change in the primary or other cognitive outcome measures. Even after statistical adjustment for multiple outcomes, self-rated measures related to negative affect and stress were all significantly improved in the MM intervention compared to wait-list group (PANAS-negative, CESD, PSS, and SF-36 health-related quality of life Vitality and Mental Health Component). The SF-36 Mental Health Component score improved more than the minimum clinically important difference. There were also significant changes in personality traits such as Neuroticism. Changes in positive affect were not observed. There were no group differences in salivary cortisol, or heart rate variability. These moderate sized improvements in self-rated measures were not paralleled by improvements in cognitive function or physiological measures. Potential explanations for this discrepancy in stress-related outcomes are discussed to help improve future studies.

Adherence to Practice of Mindfulness in Novice Meditators: Practices Chosen, Amount of Time Practiced, and Long-Term Effects Following a Mindfulness-Based Intervention

“…Although considerations about the control group are out of the scope of this paper, the full RCT study compared change scores in the self-report measures between intervention and the waitlist control group in both pre- and post-intervention. Results yielded significant differences between groups that were not related to expectancy, suggesting that the changes found in the group that underwent the MM were due to the intervention (specific information can be found at Oken et al 2017). …”

“…The present study is based on the analyses of the mindfulness adherence data collected from an RCT investigating the effects of an MBI on cognitive, general mental health, and stress-related physiology among mildly stressed older adults (Oken et al 2017). A total of 134 participants were recruited from the Portland, Oregon metropolitan area between June 2011 and January 2015.…”

“…A brief description of changes in post-intervention measures, when compared to baseline among controls, is provided in the Results section. Further information pertaining the full analysis comparing intervention and control groups can be found in the main outcomes paper (Oken et al 2017). …”

“…The cognitive and physiological data are outside the scope of our current analyses. Therefore, specifics of methodology and results concerning the collection of these data are not presented in this paper (more information can be found in Oken et al 2017). The self-report questionnaires were sent to participants through a packet in the mail about 1 week prior to each lab visit.…”

Perceived stress mediates the relationship between mindfulness and negative affect variability: A randomized controlled trial among middle‐aged to older adults

“…Outcome measures were assessed at baseline and 2 months later at Visit II. Self‐rated measures of perceived stress and NA were significantly reduced following the mindfulness training when compared with WL control (Oken et al, ).…”