The effects of amount of home meditation practice in Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy on hazard of relapse to depression in the Staying Well after Depression Trial

Few empirical studies have explored the associations between formal and informal mindfulness home practice and outcome in Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT). In this study ninety-nine participants randomised to MBCT in a multi-centre randomised controlled trial completed self-reported ratings of home practice over 7 treatment weeks. Recurrence of Major Depression was assessed immediately after treatment, and at 3, 6, 9, and 12-months post-treatment. Results identified a significant association between mean daily duration of formal home practice and outcome and additionally indicated that participants who reported that they engaged in formal home practice on at least 3 days a week during the treatment phase were almost half as likely to relapse as those who reported fewer days of formal practice. These associations were independent of the potentially confounding variable of participant-rated treatment plausibility. The current study identified no significant association between informal home practice and outcome, although this may relate to the inherent difficulties in quantifying informal home mindfulness practice. These findings have important implications for clinicians discussing mindfulness-based interventions with their participants, in particular in relation to MBCT, where the amount of participant engagement in home practice appears to have a significant positive impact on outcome

Autobiographical memory and hierarchical search strategies in depressed and non-depressed participants

Background: There is a growing body of literature showing individuals with depression and other trauma-related disorders (e.g., posttraumatic stress disorder) recall more overgeneral and less specific autobiographical memories compared to normal participants. Although the mechanisms underlying overgeneral memory are quite clear, the search strategy operated within the autobiographical knowledge base, at time of recollection, requires further exploration. The current study aimed to examine the hierarchical search sequence used to recall autobiographical memories in depressed and non-depressed participants, with a view to determining whether depressed participants exhibited truncated search strategies. Methods: Thirteen depressed and an equal number of non-depressed participants retrieved 15 memories each, in response to 15 commonly used cue words. Participants reported the first memory that entered in their mind. All memory descriptions were recorded and later transcribed verbatim for content analysis.Results: Depressed participants retrieved autobiographical memories faster, produced shorter memory descriptions and were less likely to recall positive memories than non-depressed participants. Non-depressed participants were more likely to commence retrieval by accessing lifetime period knowledge followed by general event and event specific knowledge, whereas depressed participants showed a tendency to terminate retrieval at the general event level. Conclusions: It is concluded that depressed participants do adhere to the same hierarchical search strategy as non-depressed participants when retrieving specific autobiographical memories, but that they terminate their search early, resulting in overgeneral memories

Effects of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy on Specificity of Life Goals

This study explored the immediate effects of a course of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) for chronically depressed participants with a history of suicidality on the specificity of important goals for the future. Participants were randomly allocated to immediate treatment with MBCT or to a waitlist condition and life goals were assessed both before and after the treatment or waiting period. Results showed that participants receiving MBCT reported significantly more specific goals post-treatment whereas those allocated to the waitlist condition showed no significant change. Similarly, participants allocated to MBCT regarded themselves as significantly more likely to achieve their important goals post-treatment, whilst again there was no significant change in the waitlist group. Increases in goal specificity were associated with parallel increases in autobiographical memory specificity whereas increases in goal likelihood were associated with reductions in depressed mood. These results suggest that MBCT may enable participants to clarify their important goals and in doing so increase their confidence in their capacity to move in valued life directions

Suicide & Supervision: Issues for Probation Practice

Suicides by offenders in the community have been relatively under-researched in comparison with prison suicides. This study examined in-depth the events and experiences of 28 service users under probation supervision, based on continuous records from the start of their sentence to their death by suicide. The study presents novel findings through mapping suicidal behaviour on to the probation supervision process, and demonstrates the complex pathways leading to suicide in this population.Key issues identified include missed appointments, the impact of legal proceedings,changes in supervision, and the importance of recording risk

Susceptibility to prosocial and antisocial influence in adolescence.

INTRODUCTION: Adolescents are particularly susceptible to social influence and previous studies have shown that this susceptibility decreases with age. The current study used a cross-sectional experimental paradigm to investigate the effect of age and puberty on susceptibility to both prosocial and antisocial influence. METHODS: Participants (N = 520) aged 11-18 from London and Cambridge (United Kingdom) rated how likely they would be to engage in a prosocial (e.g. "help a classmate with their work") or antisocial (e.g. "make fun of a classmate") act. They were then shown the average rating (in fact fictitious) that other adolescents had given to the same question, and were then asked to rate the same behaviour again. RESULTS: Both prosocial and antisocial influence decreased linearly with age, with younger adolescents being more socially influenced when other adolescents' ratings were more prosocial and less antisocial than their own initial rating. Both antisocial and prosocial influence significantly decreased across puberty for boys but not girls (independent of age). CONCLUSIONS: These findings suggest that social influence declines with increasing maturity across adolescence. However, the exact relationship between social influence and maturity is dependent on the nature of the social influence and gender. Understanding when adolescents are most susceptible to different types of social influence, and how this might influence their social behaviour, has important implications for understanding adolescent social development

Update to the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of a mindfulness training programme in schools compared with normal school provision (MYRIAD): study protocol for a randomised controlled trial

Background: MYRIAD (My Resilience in Adolescence) is a superiority, parallel group, cluster randomised controlled trial designed to examine the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of a mindfulness training (MT) programme, compared with normal social and emotional learning (SEL) school provision to enhance mental health, social-emotional-behavioural functioning and well-being in adolescence. The original trial protocol was published in Trials (accessible at https://doi.org/10.1186/s13063-017-1917-4). This included recruitment in two cohorts, enabling the learning from the smaller first cohort to be incorporated in the second cohort. Here we describe final amendments to the study protocol and discuss their underlying rationale. // Methods: Four major changes were introduced into the study protocol: (1) there were changes in eligibility criteria, including a clearer operational definition to assess the degree of SEL implementation in schools, and also new criteria to avoid experimental contamination; (2) the number of schools and pupils that had to be recruited was increased based on what we learned in the first cohort; (3) some changes were made to the secondary outcome measures to improve their validity and ability to measure constructs of interest and to reduce the burden on school staff; and (4) the current Coronavirus Disease 2019 (SARS-CoV-2 or COVID-19) pandemic both influences and makes it difficult to interpret the 2-year follow-up primary endpoint results, so we changed our primary endpoint to 1-year follow-up. // Discussion: These changes to the study protocol were approved by the Trial Management Group, Trial Steering Committee and Data and Ethics Monitoring Committees and improved the enrolment of participants and quality of measures. Furthermore, the change in the primary endpoint will give a more reliable answer to our primary question because it was collected prior to the COVID-19 pandemic in both cohort 1 and cohort 2. Nevertheless, the longer 2-year follow-up data will still be acquired, although this time-point will be now framed as a second major investigation to answer some new important questions presented by the combination of the pandemic and our study design

Stereotyping starlings are more 'pessimistic'.

Negative affect in humans and animals is known to cause individuals to interpret ambiguous stimuli pessimistically, a phenomenon termed 'cognitive bias'. Here, we used captive European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) to test the hypothesis that a reduction in environmental conditions, from enriched to non-enriched cages, would engender negative affect, and hence 'pessimistic' biases. We also explored whether individual differences in stereotypic behaviour (repetitive somersaulting) predicted 'pessimism'. Eight birds were trained on a novel conditional discrimination task with differential rewards, in which background shade (light or dark) determined which of two covered dishes contained a food reward. The reward was small when the background was light, but large when the background was dark. We then presented background shades intermediate between those trained to assess the birds' bias to choose the dish associated with the smaller food reward (a 'pessimistic' judgement) when the discriminative stimulus was ambiguous. Contrary to predictions, changes in the level of cage enrichment had no effect on 'pessimism'. However, changes in the latency to choose and probability of expressing a choice suggested that birds learnt rapidly that trials with ambiguous stimuli were unreinforced. Individual differences in performance of stereotypies did predict 'pessimism'. Specifically, birds that somersaulted were more likely to choose the dish associated with the smaller food reward in the presence of the most ambiguous discriminative stimulus. We propose that somersaulting is part of a wider suite of behavioural traits indicative of a stress response to captive conditions that is symptomatic of a negative affective state

A prospective investigation of rumination and executive control in predicting overgeneral autobiographical memory in adolescence

The CaR-FA-X model (Williams et al., 2007), or capture and rumination (CaR), functional avoidance (FA) and impaired executive control (X), is a model of overgeneral autobiographical memory. Two mechanisms of the model, rumination and executive control were examined in isolation and in interaction to investigate overgeneral autobiographical memory over time. Method: Across two time points, six months apart, a total of 149 adolescents (13-16 years) completed a minimal instruction autobiographical memory test, a measure of executive control with emotional and non-emotional stimuli, and measures of brooding rumination and reflective pondering. Results: It was found that executive control for emotional information was negatively associated with OGM, but only when reflective pondering levels were high. Conclusion: In the context of higher levels of reflective pondering, greater switch costs (i.e. lower executive control) when processing emotional information predict a decrease in OGM over time

Effects of a brief mindfulness-based intervention on emotional regulation and levels of mindfulness in senior students

Mindfulness-based interventions have been applied in diverse populations and achieved mental health benefits. This study examined the effects of a brief mindfulness program for emotional regulation and levels of mindfulness on senior students in Brazil. The intervention consisted of six weekly meetings attended by 30 participants. It is a pre-experimental research, with pre- and post-test comparative and correlation measurements. The preliminary results, which relied on parametrical and non-parametrical tests, revealed a reduction in total emotional regulation difficulties (p = 0.0001; r = − 0.55). Also, there was an increase in the levels of mindfulness in the subtests for both dimensions under evaluation: “Awareness” (p = 0.0001; d = 0.77) and “Acceptance” (p = 0.048; d = 0.37). By associating the amount of meditative practices performed by students with the variables, a significant positive correlation was found with the mindfulness dimension “Awareness” (rP = 0.422; p = 0.020), and there was a significant negative correlation with Difficulties in emotion regulation (rS = − 0.478; p = 0.008) and with its respective subscales “Non-acceptance” (rS = − 0.654; p = 0.0001) and “Clarity” (rS = − 0.463; p = 0.010). In conclusion, the application of a brief mindfulness-based intervention is promising in Brazilian university contexts; moreover, it can bring benefits to students, e.g., an increase in emotion regulation as well as in levels of mindfulness. We suggest that further research should use an experimental design and follow-up.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio