Behaviour research and therapy
April 1, 2024
Eric L. Garland, Thupten Jinpa
4 citations
A randomized clinical trial compared Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement (MORE) with supportive psychotherapy for people with both chronic pain and opioid misuse. Participants who received MORE showed greater increases in self-transcendence during a mindfulness task, which led to stronger feelings of universal love. Those increased feelings of love, in turn, predicted lower opioid craving and reduced odds of opioid misuse over follow-ups up to nine months. The findings suggest that mindfulness practices may work partly by fostering self-transcendent experiences that enhance love and compassion, with potential benefits for reducing addictive behavior.
Behaviour research and therapy
December 1, 2024
Sibel Nayman, Isabelle Florence Schricker, Ioanna Franziska Grammatikos et al.
2 citations
Rumination and mindfulness are known risk and protective factors for mental health, but their role in Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD) is unclear. In 60 women with PMDD and 60 healthy controls, brief ambulatory inductions of ruminative and mindful self-focus were administered during the follicular and late luteal phases. Women with PMDD showed stronger increases in positive affect in response to mindful self-focus during the late luteal phase, but not during the follicular phase. Across all participants, induced rumination immediately increased negative affect and rumination while decreasing present-moment awareness, whereas mindful self-focus increased self-acceptance. These results suggest that cycle-phase-specific mindfulness interventions may benefit PMDD, and that both rumination and mindfulness are targets for brief interventions regardless of cycle phase or clinical status.
Behaviour research and therapy
July 26, 2025
Corinna Baum, Vanessa Ditter, Janina Wurtz et al.
1 citation
Directing attention either toward or away from pain can reduce its impact. The Mindfulness-based Interoceptive Exposure Task (MIET), a sensory-focus method, and a distraction task both improved cold pain tolerance and reduced pain intensity and aversiveness in 160 participants (mean age 24 years, 71% female). MIET showed particular benefit for pain tolerance. People with lower dispositional mindfulness (lower scores on mindful awareness and nonreactivity) benefited more from MIET for pain tolerance, while higher fear of pain reduced MIET's effect on pain intensity but not tolerance.
Behaviour research and therapy
April 1, 2025
Nur Hani Zainal, Christian A Webb, Lauren S Hallion
A proof-of-concept study with 40 high-worry adults (80% with an anxiety disorder) tested whether features of worry predict which cognitive strategy works best to regulate it. Participants rated their worries on five dimensions and tried mindful acceptance, focused attention meditation, or thought suppression during brain scanning. The preregistered hypotheses were not supported, but exploratory analyses showed that mindfulness-based strategies were more effective than thought suppression for worries rated as more uncontrollable. The authors call for larger studies with more varied perseverative thoughts.