One-Year Follow-Up of a Randomized Controlled Trial Piloting a Mindfulness-Based Group Intervention for Adolescent Insulin Resistance

IntroductionTo explore if a brief mindfulness-based intervention (MBI) leads to sustained, improved clinical outcomes in adolescents at-risk for type 2 diabetes (T2D).MethodsParticipants were 12–17y girls with overweight/obesity, elevated depression symptoms, and T2D family history participating in a randomized, controlled pilot trial of a six-session MBI vs. cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) group. At baseline and 1-year, mindfulness, depression, insulin resistance (IR), and body composition were assessed with validated instruments.ResultsOne-year retention was 71% (n = 12) in MBI; 81% (n = 13) in CBT. At 1-year, depression decreased (Cohen’s d = 0.68) and IR decreased (d = 0.73) in adolescents randomized to MBI compared to those in CBT. There were no significant between-condition differences in mindfulness, adiposity, or BMI.DiscussionOne-year outcomes from this randomized, controlled pilot trial suggest that brief MBI may reduce depression and IR in at-risk adolescents. Replication and exploration of mechanisms within the context of a larger clinical trial are necessary.Clinical Trial Registrationwww.ClinicalTrials.gov, identifier NCT02218138

Mindfulness in schools: a health promotion approach to improving adolescent mental health.

Between 10 and 20% of adolescents worldwide experience a mental health problem within a given 12-month period. Mental health problems impact on an adolescent’s potential to live a fulfilling and productive life and lead to challenges such as stigma, isolation and discrimination. To address this need, in recent years, there has been growing interest into broad-based school-integrated health promotion interventions that seek to build resilience and augment protective factors in adolescents. Mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) reflect one such approach that have been administered to adolescent populations in both resilience building and treatment contexts. This paper discusses the utility of school-based MBIs as an adolescent health promotion approach and makes recommendations for intervention design, delivery and evaluation. Emerging evidence indicates that school-integrated MBIs may be a cost-effective means of not only meeting government objectives relating to adolescent mental health, but also for improving the wellbeing of teachers and parents. Furthermore, there is growing evidence indicating that mindfulness can elicit improvements in student learning performance and general classroom behaviour. However, notwithstanding these beneficial properties, there remains a need to conduct large-scale empirical investigations that seek to evaluate the effectiveness of school-integrated MBIs at a regional or national level. A further challenge is the need to ensure that mindfulness instructors are able to impart to adolescents an experiential understanding of this ancient contemplative technique.N

Incorporating one health into medical education

One Health is an emerging concept that stresses the linkages between human, animal, and environmental health, as well as the need for interdisciplinary communication and collaboration to address health issues including emerging zoonotic diseases, climate change impacts, and the human-animal bond. It promotes complex problem solving using a systems framework that considers interactions between humans, animals, and their shared environment. While many medical educators may not yet be familiar with the concept, the One Health approach has been endorsed by a number of major medical and public health organizations and is beginning to be implemented in a number of medical schools. In the research setting, One Health opens up new avenues to understand, detect, and prevent emerging infectious diseases, and also to conduct translational studies across species. In the clinical setting, One Health provides practical ways to incorporate environmental and animal contact considerations into patient care. This paper reviews clinical and research aspects of the One Health approach through an illustrative case updating the biopsychosocial model and proposes a basic set of One Health competencies for training and education of human health care providers

Impact of today's media on university student's body image in Pakistan: a conservative, developing country's perspective

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Living in a world greatly controlled by mass media makes it impossible to escape its pervading influence. As media in Pakistan has been free in the true sense of the word for only a few years, its impact on individuals is yet to be assessed. Our study aims to be the first to look at the effect media has on the body image of university students in a conservative, developing country like Pakistan. Also, we introduced the novel concept of body image dissatisfaction as being both negative and positive.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A cross-sectional study was conducted among 7 private universities over a period of two weeks in the city of Karachi, Pakistan's largest and most populous city. Convenience sampling was used to select both male and female undergraduate students aged between 18 and 25 and a sample size of 783 was calculated.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Of the 784 final respondents, 376 (48%) were males and 408 (52%) females. The mean age of males was 20.77 (+/- 1.85) years and females was 20.38 (+/- 1.63) years. Out of these, 358 (45.6%) respondents had a positive BID (body image dissatisfaction) score while 426 (54.4%) had a negative BID score. Of the respondents who had positive BID scores, 93 (24.7%) were male and 265 (65.0%) were female. Of the respondents with a negative BID score, 283 (75.3%) were male and 143 (35.0%) were female. The results for BID vs. media exposure were similar in both high and low peer pressure groups. Low media exposure meant positive BID scores and vice versa in both groups (p < 0.0001) showing a statistically significant association between high media exposure and negative body image dissatisfaction. Finally, we looked at the association between gender and image dissatisfaction. Again a statistically significant association was found between positive body image dissatisfaction and female gender and negative body image dissatisfaction and male gender (p < 0.0001).</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Our study confirmed the tendency of the media to have an overall negative effect on individuals' body image. A striking feature of our study, however, was the finding that negative body image dissatisfaction was found to be more prevalent in males as compared to females. Likewise, positive BID scores were more prevalent amongst females.</p

Heritability of Intraindividual Mean and Variability of Positive and Negative Affect : Genetic Analysis of Daily Affect Ratings Over a Month

Positive affect (e.g., attentiveness) and negative affect (e.g., upset) fluctuate over time. We examined genetic influences on interindividual differences in the day-to-day variability of affect (i.e., ups and downs) and in average affect over the duration of a month. Once a day, 17-year-old twins in the United Kingdom (N = 447) rated their positive and negative affect online. The mean and standard deviation of each individual’s daily ratings across the month were used as the measures of that individual’s average affect and variability of affect. Analyses revealed that the average of negative affect was significantly heritable (.53), but the average of positive affect was not; instead, the latter showed significant shared environmental influences (.42). Fluctuations across the month were significantly heritable for both negative affect (.54) and positive affect (.34). The findings support the two-factor theory of affect, which posits that positive affect is more situational and negative affect is more dispositional