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Objective: The primary goal of the study was to assess the efficacy of mindfulness-based meditation therapy on anxiety, depression, and spiritual well-being of Japanese patients undergoing anticancer treatment. A secondary goal was to assess the relationships among anxiety, depression, spiritual well-being, growth, appreciation, pain, and symptoms.Methods: The subjects were 28 patients who were receiving anticancer treatment. The subjects participated in two sessions of mindfulness-based meditation therapy, including breathing, yoga movement and meditation. Each patient was taught the program in the first session, then exercised at home with a CD, and subsequently met the interviewer in a second session after 2 weeks. Primary physicians recruited the patients and interviews were conducted individually by nurses or psychologists with training in the program. Patients completed preintervention and postintervention questionnaires on anxiety and depression (Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale [HADS]), spiritual well-being (Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy-Spiritual [FACIT-Sp]), and appreciation, growth, pain, and symptoms. Results: HADS scores significantly decreased from 12 ± 5.3 to 8.6 ± 6.3 (p = 0.004) after the intervention, and FACIT-Sp increased from 32 ± 6.5 to 33 ± 6.9 (p = 0.69), but the change was not significant. There were significant associations between FACIT-Sp and HADS (r = −0.78, p = 000), FACIT-Sp and growth (r = −0.35, p = 0.04), FACIT-Sp and pain (r = −0.41, p = 0.02), and growth and appreciation (r = 0.45, p = 0.009). Conclusions: Mindfulness-based meditation therapy may be effective for anxiety and depression in Japanese cancer patients, and spiritual well-being is related to anxiety and depression, growth, and pain. The negative correlation of spirituality with growth differs from the results of previous studies and the mechanism of this effect needs to be investigated further.

The primary goal of the study was to assess the efficacy of mindfulness-based meditation ther-apy on the psychological well-being and sense of coherence of nurses with respect to coping with stress. The participants were 28 nurses working in a ward for elderly patients, with 15 included in the intervention group and 13 in the control group. Nurses in the intervention group received two sessions of mindfulness-based meditation therapy, including breathing, yoga movement and meditation. Each nurse was taught the program in the first session, then exercised at home w ith a CD, and subsequently met with an interviewer in a second session after two weeks. Nurses in the control group did not receive any interventions. The participants completed the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ), including subdomains of physical symptoms, anxiety and sleep disturbance, in-terference with social activities, and depression; and the Sense of Coherence (SOC) question-naire, which includes three subdomains of comprehensibility, manageability, and mean-ingfulness pre- and post-intervention. The GHQ scores of the intervention group showed a sig-nificantly greater decrease than those of the control group. The SOC scores of the interven-tion group showed a significantly greater in-crease after the intervention compared to those in the control group, with the highest score for the meaningfulness subdomain. These results indicate that mindfulness-based meditation therapy is effective for improving the psycho-logical well-being and sense of coherence of nurses, which helps them to cope with stress