Improve Caregiving for Family Members with Mental Illness with On-Line Mindfulness Training
By John M. de Castro, Ph.D.
“When specifically used with family caregivers, MBSR improves overall mental health, reduces stress and decreases depression. “ – Jane Hamilton
There is a tremendous demand for caregiving in the US. It is estimated that over 65 million (29% of the adult population) provides care to someone who is mentally or physically ill, disabled or aged, averaging 20 hours per week spent caring for their loved ones. This caregiving comes at a cost to the caregiver. It exacts a tremendous toll on caregivers’ health and well-being. Caregiving has been associated with increased levels of depression and anxiety as well as higher use of psychoactive medications, poorer self-reported physical health, compromised immune function, and increased mortality.
Providing care for a relative with mental illness can be particularly challenging. Mental illnesses can make it difficult to relate to the individual and receive the kind of positive feelings that can support caregiving. The challenges of caring for a relative with mental illness require that the individual be able to deal with stress, to regulate their own emotions, and to be sensitive and attentive. These skills are exactly those that are developed in mindfulness training. It improves the psychological and physiological responses to stress. It improves emotion regulation. And it improves the ability to maintain attention and focus in the face of high levels of distraction. So, it is not surprising that mindfulness improves caregiving and assists the caregiver in coping with the stress.
The vast majority of the mindfulness training techniques, however, require a certified trained therapist. This produces costs that many clients can’t afford. In addition, the participants must be available to attend multiple sessions at particular scheduled times that may or may not be compatible with their busy schedules. This is particularly true for caregivers where the demands on the individual are substantial. As a result, there has been attempts to develop on-line mindfulness training programs. These have tremendous advantages in decreasing costs and making training schedules much more flexible. But, the question arises as to whether these programs are as effective as their traditional counterparts.
In today’s Research News article “Effectiveness and Usability of a Web-Based Mindfulness Intervention for Families Living with Mental Illness.” See summary below or view the full text of the study at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5408047/, Stjernswärd and Hansson recruited adult participants who have a family member with a diagnosed mental illness. They were randomized into a mindfulness training and a wait-list control group. Mindfulness training occurred on-line and consisted of audio/video files, descriptive text files, and instructions for daily mindfulness exercises, and self-compassion exercises. It was recommended that participants engage in the training twice a day for 10 minutes, six days per week for 8 weeks. recommended training was set to 2 × 10 min/day, 6 days/week for 8 consecutive weeks.
Participants were measured before and after training and 3-months later for mindfulness, caregiver quality of life, self-compassion, and perceived stress. They found that mindfulness training produced significant increases in mindfulness, self-compassion, and caregiver quality of life, including relational problems, mental health, and problems with daily activities and significant reductions in perceived stress.
These are interesting results but must be tempered with the knowledge that the control condition was a no-treatment, wait-list control. So, the results could be due to confounding factors such as placebo effects, experimenter bias, attention effects, etc. But, they suggest that mindfulness training for caregivers with family members with mental illnesses can be successfully delivered on-line. If the results are supported by better controlled trials, they could be important in that improvements in the mental health and quality of life can be offered to caregivers in a convenient and inexpensive format. This could be very helpful in relieving a difficult situation for the caregivers and result in improved caregiving.
So, improve caregiving for family members with mental illness with on-line mindfulness training.
“5 Steps to Avoid Caregiver Burnout
- Develop a mindfulness practice, whether it’s yoga, meditation, or Qigong.
- Incorporate mini-mindfulness moments. Set aside time several times a day to ground yourself and to be in the present moment.
- Learn to accept your emotions, both pleasant and unpleasant, rather than wishing them away.
- Recognize the need for self-care in caregiving. Taking time for yourself may be an old piece of advice but it’s essential.
- Find a support network that can help you build a mindfulness practice, whether it is your friend, the YMCA, or a meditation group.” – Jason Drwal
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
Stjernswärd, S., & Hansson, L. (2017). Effectiveness and Usability of a Web-Based Mindfulness Intervention for Families Living with Mental Illness. Mindfulness, 8(3), 751–764. http://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-016-0653-2
Abstract
Families living with mental illness express needs of support and experiences of burden that may affect their own health detrimentally and hence also their ability to support the patient. Mindfulness-based interventions have shown beneficial health effects in both clinical and healthy populations. The aim of the current study was to explore the effectiveness and usability of a web-based mindfulness program for families living with mental illness, which was first tested in a feasibility study. The study was designed as a randomized controlled trial with an experiment group and a wait-list control group with assessments on primary and secondary outcomes at baseline, post-intervention, and at a 3-month follow-up. Significant positive improvements in mindfulness and self-compassion, and significant decreases in perceived stress and in certain dimensions of caregiver burden were found, with good program usability. Easily accessible mindfulness-based interventions may be useful in addressing caregivers’ needs of support and in preventing further ill health in caregivers. Further studies are needed, among others, to further customize interventions and to investigate the cost-effectiveness of such programs.