JAMA Internal Medicine
February 16, 2015
David S. Black, Gillian A. O’Reilly, Richard Olmstead et al.
485 citations
A 6-week mindfulness meditation program improved sleep quality more than sleep hygiene education in older adults with moderate sleep disturbances. Participants in the mindfulness group saw their sleep quality scores drop from 10.2 to 7.4 on the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, while the education group's scores fell from 10.2 to 9.1, a between-group difference of 1.8 points. The mindfulness group also showed greater reductions in insomnia symptoms, depression symptoms, and fatigue. No significant differences were found for anxiety, stress, or a marker of inflammation, though the inflammation marker declined over time in both groups. The findings suggest that community-accessible mindfulness programs can improve sleep and related daytime impairment in older adults.
General Hospital Psychiatry
September 11, 2021
Jennifer Huberty, Megan E. Puzia, Jeni Green et al.
76 citations
Using a meditation app for eight weeks led to greater improvements in depression and anxiety among 239 adults with insomnia symptoms compared to a control group. The mental health benefits were driven by reductions in both physical and mental arousal before sleep, which fully accounted for the effect on depression and partially for the effect on anxiety. Fatigue and daytime sleepiness did not explain the changes. A meditation app may improve depression and anxiety in adults with sleep disturbance by lowering pre-sleep arousal.
Translational Psychiatry
March 21, 2021
Jennifer L. Kruse, Megha M Vasavada, Richard Olmstead et al.
47 citations
Lower baseline levels of the inflammatory marker interleukin-8 (IL-8) in females, but not males, trended toward predicting a better response to ketamine for depression. In 46 depressed patients receiving a single ketamine infusion, changes in IL-8 over time also differed by sex and treatment response: increasing IL-8 was associated with decreasing depression scores in females, while the opposite pattern appeared in males. Other inflammatory markers showed no significant relationships. These preliminary findings suggest that sex differences in IL-8 may help explain how ketamine works and could guide personalized depression treatment.
PLoS One
January 1, 2021
Jennifer Huberty, Megan E. Puzia, Linda Larkey et al.
A survey of Calm app subscribers who used a sleep-related component in the prior 90 days found that most reported help falling asleep, staying asleep, and getting restful sleep. Nearly half of participants had a mental health diagnosis (anxiety, depression, or PTSD), and most of those reported that Calm helped improve symptoms. Using meditation components was associated with perceived improvement in anxiety and depression, but Sleep Stories and music/soundscapes were not. Severity of sleep disturbance moderated the link between using Calm components and reporting better sleep, but not between using components and mental health improvements.
PLoS One
July 15, 2019
Eric López Maya, Richard Olmstead, Michael R. Irwin
A randomized clinical trial compared a standardized mindfulness meditation program (MAPs) with health education (HE) among 76 Latino adults in Los Angeles, half Spanish-speaking and half English-speaking, who had moderate perceived stress. Depressive symptoms, measured by the Beck Depression Inventory, improved more in the MAPs group than in the HE group, with a mean difference of -2.2 points and a small effect size of 0.28. Similar benefits appeared in both language groups. Mindfulness also improved more with MAPs, but perceived stress did not differ between groups. The comparable efficacy in Spanish and English suggests that this community-based mindfulness intervention may help reduce depression risk in Latino adults facing social adversity.