Chronic pain and depression are linked to reduced body awareness. Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) increased certain aspects of body awareness—specifically self-regulation and not distracting from bodily sensations—more than treatment as usual in 31 patients with chronic pain and active depression. The improvement in depression severity was partly explained by the increased ability to not distract from bodily sensations. These results offer preliminary support for the idea that mindfulness interventions can enhance body awareness in this population and highlight its clinical importance.
Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression (MBCT-D) appears to repair deficits in positive affect in people with residual depression by training them to attend to external sensory experiences. Secondary analyses of two randomized controlled trials found that increased external sensory observing mediated the superiority of MBCT-D over a waitlist control in one study and over maintenance antidepressants in a second study. The findings suggest that enhancing attention to external sensory input may be a key mechanism through which MBCT-D improves positive affect in this population.
In a randomized controlled trial, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) reduced momentary paranoia and increased feelings of social acceptance in daily life among people with residual mood instability after major depression. Paranoia decreased significantly in the MBCT group and increased in the waiting-list control group, while social acceptance rose in the MBCT group and fell in controls. MBCT also weakened the link between paranoia and lower social acceptance. The findings suggest MBCT can interrupt social processes that maintain subclinical paranoia.