Mindfulness training in Physical Health: how might changes in emotional experience and/or regulation be implicated?

Abstract

In today's modern world, where more people are living longer in the presence of chronic physical illnesses and mental-health conditions, mindfulness training may represent a useful supplementary treatment approach. Rapidly increasing research has documented the ability of mindfulness-based interventions to improve health outcomes. However, often overlooked, are questions regarding the clinical relevance of these improvements, for patients and clinicians alike. Similarly, despite substantial work examining emotion-related processes as mechanisms of mindfulness training, how these processes translate into physical health benefits remains unclear. This doctoral work addressed these two limitations in the extant literature by investigating: (1) whether standardized Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) benefitted objective physical health outcomes, that are also patient important and clinically meaningful, in the context of Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA); and (2) how changes in emotional experience and/or regulation might be implicated in the relationship between mindfulness training and salutary physical health outcomes. A randomized controlled trial (RCT) investigated: (1) the efficacy of MBSR for reducing RA disease activity; and (2) the mediating effects of any changes in depression and/or anxiety, on changes in RA disease activity. A laboratory study investigating whether trait mindfulness was related to physiological responding, as measured by heart rate variability (HRV), and self-emotion differentiation in response to emotional stress, was also conducted.