Older adults with HIV and cognitive impairment who took an 8-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program showed significant improvement in depression symptoms immediately after the program compared to a waitlist control group, but this benefit was not maintained one month later. The MBSR group also reported improved quality of life from the start of the program to the 16-week follow-up. Cognitive performance, including speed of information processing, working memory, attention, and impulsivity, did not differ between the MBSR and control groups. MBSR may help alleviate depression and improve quality of life in older individuals with HIV-associated neurocognitive disorder, but sustaining these benefits requires further study.
Teaching quality in mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) courses, measured by the Mindfulness-Based Interventions: Teaching Assessment Criteria (MBI:TAC), shows fair to good inter-rater reliability depending on the number of raters. Using a single rater, reliability was fair (intraclass correlation coefficients 0.33–0.56 across six domains); with three raters, reliability was good (0.6–0.8). Among 152 MBSR students, anxiety, depression, fatigue, sleep, and social role function improved from before the course to two and four months later (improvements of 2.3 to 6.3 points). Higher MBI:TAC ratings predicted greater anxiety reduction: each one-unit increase in composite teaching rating was associated with a 0.31-point greater decrease in anxiety score. No significant relationships were found for other health domains.