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Background: Following bereavement, prolonged and intense yearning and grief rumination are repetitive cognitive processes that can promote a complicated course of grief. Mindfulness training (MT) has been shown to reduce maladaptive repetitive thought in healthy and clinical populations. However, empirical investigation of MT in bereaved populations is limited. The current randomized controlled pilot trial implemented a MT intervention for widow(er)s to examine the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary efficacy of MT for improving grief outcomes and to test the mediating effects of yearning and grief rumination on grief severity. Method: Ninety five people who experienced the death of a spouse or romantic partner between six months to four years prior were randomly assigned to a 6 week MT intervention or a Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR) intervention, or were quasi randomized to a wait list condition. Self reported psychosocial outcomes were assessed at baseline, post intervention, and 1 month post intervention. In addition, yearning, grief rumination, decentering, and grief severity were assessed at two additional time points at weeks two and four of the intervention/wait list period to preserve a temporal connection between mediators and outcomes. Results: Controlling for relevant covariates, the MT and PMR groups showed significant declines in grief severity and yearning from baseline to the 1 month follow up, though only the PMR group showed a significant difference in rates of change compared to the wait list control group. Multi level mediation analyses revealed that reductions in yearning mediated the declines in grief severity. The MT, PMR, and wait list groups showed significant decreases in grief rumination across intervention time points for all but one grief rumination subscale, which was rumination about injustice of the death. Last, the PMR and wait list groups showed significant increases in decentering across study time points whereas the M

Research demonstrates that mindfulness in younger and middle-aged adults is associated with cognitive and emotional benefits. Mindfulness in older adults is less frequently studied but given the overlap between cognitive and emotional benefits of mindfulness and domains of age-related decline, this may be an important population to investigate. The present set of three studies had three aims: 1) to establish the validity of the Five Faceted Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ) as a measure of mindfulness in an older adult population (Study 1); 2) to examine the cognitive and emotional associations of dispositional mindfulness (as assessed by the FFMQ and breath counting, a behavioral measure of mindfulness) in older adults (Study 2); and 3) to investigate the cognitive and emotional benefits of a brief online mindfulness training for older adults (Study 3). Concurrent goals of these studies were to examine the specificity of the FFMQ facets for predicting behavior (to examine the multifaceted nature of mindfulness) and to address the recent call in the field of mindfulness research for greater methodological rigor. To address the latter, we used objective measures of mindfulness, cognition, and emotional functioning and in our third study, a well-matched, active control condition. Results suggest that the five facets of the FFMQ hold in an older adult population (Study 1), that dispositional mindfulness is modestly associated with some aspects of attention, executive functioning, and emotion regulation (Study 2), and that mindfulness training may improve attention and increase facets of mindfulness (although this was not specific to our mindfulness condition; Study 3). We also found some mixed evidence for the specificity of the facets in predicting cognitive and emotional functioning (Study 2). We did not find that the breath counting task predicted any domains of functioning nor did accuracy on this task improve after training. These preliminary data are interesting b

Providing care for a frail older adult who is suffering from dementia has been described as a stressful experience that may erode psychological well-being and physical health of caregivers. The burden and stress is increased when the caregivers are themselves elderly. The present study investigated an 8-week stress-reduction program, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), and compared it to a similarly structured, alternative behavioral intervention, Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR), to determine if MBSR was as effective or more effective than PMR at reducing subjective burden, symptoms of depression, perceived loneliness or perceived stress among middle-aged and older family caregivers of persons with dementia and other neurocognitive disorders. Twenty-eight participants were randomly assigned to either MBSR or PMR. Self-report and biological measures were collected on five occasions: At the beginning and end of intervention training, and at 8 weeks, 6 months and 1 year following the end of intervention training. In addition to a packet of self-report questionnaires and home-collected salivary cortisol, a laboratory controlled emotional stress test was designed to elicit an emotionally stressful response relevant to caregivers’ experience of caregiving, and facilitate the measurement of stress-related changes in systolic blood pressure and cortisol reactivity. At 1 year post-intervention, the PMR group showed a significantly greater reduction in perceived stress and disruptive patient behaviors. A reduction in emotional reactivity to patient problem behaviors approached significance (p = .08) at 1 year post-intervention for the PMR group. The MBSR group showed significantly greater reductions in self-reported symptoms of depression and perceived isolation from pre- to post-intervention, and those changes remained significant at 8 weeks post-intervention. However, by 1 year post-intervention, interaction effects were non-significant as both groups showed simi

Terror management theory research suggests that self-esteem acts as an anxiety buffer and high self-esteem can reduce implicit death thoughts and worldview defense. Self-compassion, it is argued, enhances wellbeing by making people feel safe and secure, while self-esteem makes people feel superior and sometimes unrealistically self-confident. Through a series of studies, this dissertation investigated buffering of death anxiety by self-compassion. Studies 1 and 2 investigated the role of trait (Study 1) and induced (Study 2) self-compassion in buffering existential anxiety by reducing implicit death thoughts. Studies 3 and 4 investigated the role of trait (Study 3) and induced (Study 4) self-compassion in buffering existential anxiety by reducing worldview defense. The series of studies did not support the proposed hypotheses, as they failed to replicate the expected mortality salience effects. Because of this, the effects of self-compassion on implicit death anxiety were also not evident. Possible reasons for failure to reject the null hypotheses are discussed and recommendation for future studies is given.

Blood pressure (BP) in healthy individuals typically exhibits normal diurnal variation ("nocturnal dipping"), with nighttime systolic reductions of 10-20%. Having sustained BP levels, without normal nocturnal dipping, has been associated with increased risk for cardiovascular disease and poorer performance on memory measures especially within the context of hypertension. A positive family history of hypertension has also been related to poorer performance on neuropsychological tests of visuospatial/constructional ability, verbal learning, attention, and memory. The present study investigated the effect of nocturnal BP dipping status in hypertensive and normotensive individuals, with and without a family history of hypertension, to determine if these factors contributed to declines in cognition and brain atrophy over a two-year period in otherwise healthy older adults. Eighty-one neurologically healthy older adults aged 68-89 received a battery of neuropsychological tests, 24-hour ambulatory BP monitoring, structural magnetic resonance imaging, health screening and questionnaires at baseline. Two-years later participants received follow-up neuropsychological testing and structural magnetic resonance imaging. Analysis of variance investigated the effects of age, nocturnal BP dipping status, hypertension, and family history of hypertension on residualized change scores for measures of memory, executive function, and processing speed. Additionally, multivariate analysis of variance was used with region of interest measures of brain structure to evaluate the effects of age, nocturnal BP dipping status, hypertension, and family history of hypertension on brain atrophy. Results indicated main effects for dipping status with non-dippers showing poorer performance on measures of memory compared to dippers. An interaction between nocturnal BP dipping and hypertension status was also observed on a test of executive functioning, with non-dipping hypertensives performing more po