Global advances in integrative medicine and health
January 1, 2024
Kavita K Mishra, Ivan C Leung, Maria T Chao et al.
5 citations
Mindfulness-based group medical visits (MB-GMVs) delivered via telehealth are a feasible and acceptable way to increase access to mindfulness-based interventions for racially and ethnically diverse patients undergoing cancer treatment. In a quality improvement project, 80% of referred patients enrolled; 90% attended at least three of four weekly sessions. Participants were 22% Asian, 14% Black, 17% Latino, and 45% non-Latino White; 65% were female; median age was 54; and 80% had metastatic cancer. On final evaluations, 87% rated the series as excellent, 81% strongly agreed they liked the group medical visit format, and 92% would definitely recommend it. Qualitative themes included empowerment and connectedness.
Global advances in integrative medicine and health
January 1, 2025
Dorothy T Chiu, Forest Fein, Ariana Thompson-Lastad et al.
2 citations
Integrating a mindfulness elective into a year-long job training program for diverse, low-income emerging adults improved mindfulness, life satisfaction, and self-compassion while reducing stress. Over two years, 195 participants (mean age 22.3, 94.4% from racially and ethnically minoritized groups) took the elective. In Year 1, mindfulness participants showed greater mindfulness (+8.4) and life satisfaction (+10.3) and lower stress (-8.2); controls showed no changes. In Year 2, both 12-week and 6-week groups improved in mindfulness, life satisfaction, self-compassion, connectedness, and mind-body connection, with larger gains in the longer course. Focus groups confirmed that the elective supported self-care, health, and professional development, suggesting such integration can promote mental health equity.
Am J Orthopsychiatry
January 9, 2025
Ariana Thompson-Lastad, Shah Noor Hussein, Jessica M. Harrison et al.
A community-based loving-kindness meditation program helped diverse LGBTQ+ adults build belonging, compassion, and resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants reported that the practice supported them in coping with both personal stressors and structural oppression. Three main themes emerged: the community of practice fostered belonging; metta meditation cultivated compassion and equanimity; and the practice helped navigate harmful situations. The findings suggest that community spaces designed for belonging can connect contemplative practice with social change efforts.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2020
Helen Y. Weng, Mushim P. Ikeda, Jarrod A Lewis-Peacock et al.
Mindfulness and compassion meditation are thought to promote prosocial behavior, but prior research has lacked diversity, limiting generalizability. To address this, researchers propose Intersectional Neuroscience, a framework that adapts research procedures to be inclusive of underrepresented groups through community engagement and individualized multivariate methods. Partnering with a diverse U.S. meditation center, they adapted fMRI screening and recruitment to include racial/ethnic minorities, gender and sexual minorities, people with disabilities, neuropsychiatric disorders, and lower-income individuals. They scanned 15 diverse meditators (80% racial/ethnic minorities, 53% gender and sexual minorities) and used individualized machine learning on fMRI data to decode mental states during breath-focused meditation. All participants' unique brain patterns were recognized significantly above chance. This demonstrates feasibility of inclusive neuroscience to develop individualized neural metrics of meditation.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
January 1, 2020
Helen Y. Weng, Jarrod A Lewis-Peacock, Frederick M Hecht et al.
Multi-voxel pattern analysis of fMRI data can recognize five internal attentional states—breath attention, mind wandering, self-referential processing, attention to feet, and attention to sounds—in individual participants with accuracy well above chance (over 41% vs. 20% chance). In a mixed sample of 16 experienced meditators and novices, classifiers trained on a directed attention task successfully identified these states in 87.5% of participants. When applied to a separate 10-minute meditation session, the classifiers indicated that participants spent more time attending to breath than mind wandering or self-referential processing. The findings suggest that objective, participant-level measurement of mental states during meditation is feasible, potentially improving assessment of internally-oriented attention cultivated by meditation.