Improve Caregivers Emotion Regulation with Mindfulness

By John M. de Castro, Ph.D.

“Caregivers have a habit of neglecting their own wellbeing for their patients’ sakes. Some caregivers even believe taking a few minutes out of the day to practice mindfulness is “selfish.” Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, taking a few minutes to practice mindfulness everyday will improve the quality of care you can give to your patient. It should be mandatory that all caregivers practice some form of mindfulness today” – Caregiver Space

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.

Mindfulness training has been shown to be beneficial for both the caregiver and the patients. But, this is reactive, working with already stressed caregivers. It is important to be able to be proactive and better prepare caregivers to withstand the difficulties and stress of caregiving and provide better care for patients. In today’s Research News article “Developing professional caregivers’ empathy and emotional competencies through mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR): results of two proof-of-concept studies.” (See summary below or view the full text of the study at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5781061/ ), Lamothe and colleagues investigate the effects of mindfulness training on the emotion regulation ability of psychology students and professional caregivers.

They recruited psychology students in a university and professional caregivers in a pediatric hematology-oncology unit of a hospital. They were provided a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program. The MBSR program was presented for 2 hours, once a week, for 8 weeks with 30-minute daily home practice. It consisted of discussion and meditation, body scan, and yoga practices. They were measured before and after the program and 3 months later for mindfulness, empathy, emotional competencies, recognition of emotions in others, emotional acceptance, and emotion regulation.

They found that in both groups there were large increases in mindfulness that were maintained 3 month later. In addition, they found that there were significant improvements after training in empathy, emotional competencies, recognition of emotions in others, identification of emotions in others, emotional acceptance, and emotion regulation, with the exception that the caregivers change in recognition of emotions in others was not statistically significant. At the 3-month follow-up they found that there were still significant improvements in identifying emotions and emotional acceptance.

These results are preliminary as there wasn’t a comparison, control, condition. As such, they are interpreted as a proof of concept. To reach firm conclusions a randomized controlled clinical trial with an active control condition is necessary. The results are interesting and powerful enough that such an extensive study is warranted. Nevertheless, the results provide preliminary evidence that mindfulness training improves the emotional competences of both students and professional caregivers. This suggests that mindfulness training can be used both for practicing caregivers and those in training. Hence, mindfulness training may be helpful both reactively and proactively to promote the emotional health of the caregivers and, in turn, provide better care.

So, improve caregivers emotion regulation with mindfulness.

“mindfulness practices can help both caregivers and their loved ones maintain their emotional well-being. This is important for two reasons. First, strong emotional well-being is a good defense against such stress-related problems as depression and anxiety. Second, emotional well-being supports the resiliency that makes a person’s life not just tolerable, but enjoyable and meaningful: restful sleep, invigorating exercise, healthful food and some form of spiritual or emotional nourishment.” – Adam Perlman

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

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Study Summary

Lamothe, M., McDuff, P., Pastore, Y. D., Duval, M., & Sultan, S. (2018). Developing professional caregivers’ empathy and emotional competencies through mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR): results of two proof-of-concept studies. BMJ Open, 8(1), e018421. http://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2017-018421

Abstract

Objectives

To assess the feasibility and acceptability of a mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR)-based intervention and determine if the intervention is associated with a significant signal on empathy and emotional competencies.

Design

Two pre–post proof-of-concept studies.

Setting

Participants were recruited at the University of Montreal’s Psychology Department (Study 1) and the CHU Sainte-Justine Department of Hematology-Oncology (Study 2).

Participants

Study 1: 12 students completed the 8-week programme (mean age 24, range 18–34). Study 2: 25 professionals completed the 8-week programme (mean age 48, range 27–63).

Intervention

Standard MBSR programme including 8-week mindfulness programme consisting of 8 consecutive weekly 2-hour sessions and a full-day silent retreat.

Outcomes measures

Mindfulness as measured by the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale; empathy as measured by the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI)’s Perspective Taking and Empathic Concern subscales; identification of one’s own emotions and those of others as measured by the Profile of Emotional Competence (PEC)’s Identify my Emotions and Identify Others’ Emotions subscales; emotional acceptance as measured by the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire-II (AAQ-II) and the Emotion Regulation Scale (ERQ)’s Expressive Suppression subscale; and recognition of emotions in others as measured by the Geneva Emotion Recognition Test (GERT).

Results

In both studies, retention rates (80%–81%) were acceptable. Participants who completed the programme improved on all measures except the PEC’s Identify Others’ Emotions and the IRI’s Empathic Concern (Cohen’s d median=0.92, range 45–1.72). In Study 2, favourable effects associated with the programme were maintained over 3 months on the PEC’s Identify my Emotions, the AAQ-II, the ERQ’s Expressive Suppression and the GERT.

Conclusions

The programme was feasible and acceptable. It was associated with a significant signal on the following outcomes: perspective taking, the identification of one’s own emotions and emotional acceptance, thus, justifying moving towards efficacy trials using these outcomes.

Strengths and limitations of this study

Two feasibility studies of a mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR)-based intervention in students and professionals had high attendance rates and acceptability levels.

Results suggested a significant clinical signal on most measured outcomes in the domains of emotion regulation and empathy, with effects lasting at follow-up for identification of one’s own emotions and emotional acceptance.

The same pattern of results was obtained in two independent small-scale studies.

A limitation to theses studies is that samples were not randomly selected, had limited size, and no control groups were used.

Another limitation is that most outcomes were self-reported and could be subject to desirability bias.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5781061/

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