Improve Psychological and Emotional Well-Being in the Elderly with Mindfulness
By John M. de Castro, Ph.D.
“While we might expect our bodies and brains to follow a shared trajectory of development and degeneration over time, by actively practicing strategies such as meditation, we might actually preserve and protect our physical body and brain structure to extend our golden years and shine even more brightly in old age.” – Rina Deshpande
Human life is one of constant change. We revel in our increases in physical and mental capacities during development, but regret their decline during aging. During aging, there is a systematic progressive decline in every system in the body, the brain included. This includes our mental abilities which decline with age and result in impairments in memory, attention, and problem solving ability. It is inevitable and cannot be avoided. Using modern neuroimaging techniques, scientists have been able to view the changes that occur in the nervous system with aging. In addition, they have been able to investigate various techniques that might slow the process of neurodegeneration that accompanies normal aging. They’ve found that mindfulness practices reduce the deterioration of the brain that occurs with aging restraining the loss of neural tissue. Indeed, the brains of practitioners of meditation and yoga have been found to degenerate less with aging than non-practitioners.
Mindfulness also appears to be effective for an array of physical and psychological issues that occur with aging. It appears to strengthen the immune system and reduce inflammation. It has also been shown to be beneficial in slowing or delaying physical and mental decline with aging. and improve cognitive processes. It has also been shown to reduce the shortening of the telomeres in the DNA, an indicator of aging. Since the global population of the elderly is increasing at unprecedented rates, it is imperative to investigate methods to slow physical and mental aging and mitigate its effects.
In today’s Research News article “Mindfulness-Based Interventions for Older Adults: A Review of the Effects on Physical and Emotional Well-being.” See summary below or view the full text of the study at:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4868399/
Geiger and colleagues review and summarize the published research literature on the effectiveness of mindfulness training in mitigating some of the effects of the aging process. They found 15 published articles that employed mindfulness-based interventions with participants over 65 years of age. The most commonly used mindfulness training method was Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). In general, these interventions appeared to be acceptable to the elderly as they had relatively low attrition rates (drop out of participants) of around 17%.
They report that the research found that mindfulness training of the elderly produced significant improvement in their psychological well-being including decreases in loneliness, depression, anxiety, stress, sleep problems, and rumination, and increases in general mood and positive affect. In regard to physical health and well-being they report that the literature has conflicting and inconclusive results. Hence, it appears that mindfulness training of the elderly clearly improves psychological well-being, but further research is needed to understand its effects of physical well-being.
These findings are interesting and important. They clearly show the positive impact mindfulness training can have on the emotional health of the elderly. It should be mentioned that the review did not look at the effects of mindfulness training on the cognitive abilities of the participants. Hence, it is clear that mindfulness training is a useful way to preserve psychological and emotional health with aging. This suggests that mindfulness training should be recommended for the elderly particularly to improve their mental health.
Improve psychological and emotional well-being in the elderly with mindfulness.
“While it is a given that each day we get older and may experience the joys and sometimes the pains of aging, finding ways to age “mindfully” is an option for each of us. Just as the health benefits of regular exercise and healthy eating are demonstrated for heart and bone health, we can also keep our brains healthy and “fit” through the practice of mindfulness meditation.” – Dawn Bazarko
CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies
This and other Contemplative Studies posts are also available on Google+ https://plus.google.com/106784388191201299496/posts and on Twitter @MindfulResearch
Study Summary
Geiger, P. J., Boggero, I. A., Brake, C. A., Caldera, C. A., Combs, H. L., Peters, J. R., & Baer, R. A. (2016). Mindfulness-Based Interventions for Older Adults: A Review of the Effects on Physical and Emotional Well-being. Mindfulness, 7(2), 296–307. http://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-015-0444-1
Abstract
This comprehensive review examined the effects of mindfulness-based interventions on the physical and emotional wellbeing of older adults, a rapidly growing segment of the general population. Search procedures yielded 15 treatment outcome studies meeting inclusion criteria. Support was found for the feasibility and acceptability of mindfulness-based interventions with older adults. Physical and emotional wellbeing outcome variables offered mixed support for the use of mindfulness-based interventions with older adults. Potential explanations of mixed findings may include methodological flaws, study limitations, and inconsistent modifications of protocols. These are discussed in detail and future avenues of research are discussed, emphasizing the need to incorporate geriatric populations into future mindfulness-based empirical research.