Transitional-age youth with major depressive disorder experience pervasive abnormalities in how they perceive time and space. In a descriptive phenomenological qualitative study at a psychiatric hospital in China, 17 participants described five overarching themes: disturbance of time order, slackening of the flow of time, vital inhibition, desynchronisation of social rhythms, and disturbance of lived space. These disturbances shape their sense of self, personal development, relationships, and engagement with the world. Desynchronisation of social rhythms appears to be a unique and developmentally salient challenge for this group. The findings expand phenomenological understandings of major depressive disorder and highlight developmental vulnerabilities during this critical life phase.
A systematic review and meta-analysis of 17 articles including 632 nurses indicates that mindfulness training reduces burnout, producing lower scores for emotional exhaustion and depersonalization and higher scores for personal accomplishment. Mean differences between intervention and control groups were 1.32 (95% CI: -9.41 to 6.78) for emotional exhaustion, 1.91 (95% CI: -4.50 to 0.68) for depersonalization, and 2.12 (95% CI: -9.91 to 14.14) for personal accomplishment. The authors conclude that mindfulness training reduces emotional burden and burnout among nurses, but call for further randomized clinical trials.
Nursing staff in long-term care facilities who report higher self-transcendence also report greater well-being, and this relationship is partly explained by their caring behaviors. Survey data from 276 nurses and nurse-aids across 55 facilities showed that self-transcendence was positively linked to both caring behaviors and well-being. Caring behaviors partially mediated the connection between self-transcendence and well-being, suggesting that fostering self-transcendence may enhance well-being partly through increased caring behaviors. The findings highlight the importance of these personal and behavioral factors for staff well-being in long-term care settings.
Centring and opening are two distinct meditation processes that are often conflated in healthcare literature. Both involve present-moment awareness, a gentle effortless approach, and produce a calming effect. However, centring focuses on the individual's inner experience, while opening involves a non-dual, spacious awareness. A concept analysis using Rodgers' evolutionary method, drawing on 10 articles and 11 books for centring and 13 articles and 10 books for opening, found these processes overlapping yet distinct. The findings argue that the term meditation should not be used generically in healthcare, as the differences have important implications for nursing theory development and for guiding meditation research.