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Comparing the effects of a mindfulness versus relaxation intervention on romantic relationship wellbeing.

ABSTRACT: There is increasing scientific interest in the potential association between mindfulness and romantic relationship wellbeing. To date, however, experimental studies using active control groups and testing dyadic effects (i.e. examining both actor and partner effects) are lacking. In the current study, romantically involved individuals engaged for 2 weeks daily in either guided mindfulness exercises, or guided relaxation exercises. Participants, and their partners, completed measures of relationship wellbeing at pre- and post-intervention, and at 1-month follow up. The mindfulness intervention significantly promoted relationship wellbeing, for both participants (i.e. actor effects) and their partners (i.e. partner effects). However, these findings did not significantly differ from changes in relationship wellbeing in the relaxation condition. Theoretical implications of these findings for understanding the association between mindfulness and romantic relationship wellbeing are discussed. Moreover, the findings are discussed in light of recent debates about the relative lack of proper control groups in mindfulness research.

SUBMITTER: Karremans JC

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7730385 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Comparing the effects of a mindfulness versus relaxation intervention on romantic relationship wellbeing.

Karremans Johan C JC Kappen Gesa G Schellekens Melanie M Schoebi Dominik D

Scientific reports 20201210 1

There is increasing scientific interest in the potential association between mindfulness and romantic relationship wellbeing. To date, however, experimental studies using active control groups and testing dyadic effects (i.e. examining both actor and partner effects) are lacking. In the current study, romantically involved individuals engaged for 2 weeks daily in either guided mindfulness exercises, or guided relaxation exercises. Participants, and their partners, completed measures of relations ...[more]

PMID: 33303938

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Project description:BACKGROUND:Medical students are exposed to an emotionally exhausting training/work environment and to stressful academic demands. Consequently, psychopathologies, burnout and suicidal ideation are frequent in this population. These factors can also affect their empathy and quality of care. Therefore, the development and implementation of programs to promote resilience to stress specifically in medical students and the evaluation of their efficiency are a priority. Here, we describe the protocol of the first French study to assess the long-term effectiveness and acceptability of a mindfulness-based intervention (MBI) compared with relaxation training (RT) to reduce emotional exhaustion in medical students. METHODS:This multicenter randomized controlled trial ("Must prevent") plans to enroll 612 students in the fourth and fifth year of medical studies from nine French universities. After inclusion, they will be assigned randomly to the MBI or RT group. Both interventions are structured around an 8-week program that includes one group class per week and daily at-home exercises. The primary endpoint is the emotional exhaustion score assessed with the Maslach Burnout Inventory at month 12 of the follow-up. Secondary endpoints include anxiety-depressive symptomatology, suicidality, psychoactive substance use, depersonalization, psychological and physical pain, empathy, emotional regulation, self-compassion, mindfulness, quality of life, and program acceptability. Evaluations will be done before and immediately after the 8-week intervention, and at month 6 and 12 of the post-intervention follow-up. DISCUSSION:If the proposed interventions are well accepted and useful to decrease negative emotions and/or increase wellbeing among medical students, they should be disseminated among this population and even included as part of the training on emotional skills needed for the routine medical practice. TRIAL REGISTRATION:This trial is registered under the number NCT04026594 (July 18, 2019).

Project description:The occurrence of a stressful event is considered to increase the risk of developing depression. In the present study we explore whether the breakup of a romantic relationship can be used as an experimental model to study a depression-like state during a period of stress in individuals without a psychiatric disorder. The primary aim of our study was to investigate: 1) whether individuals with a recent romantic relationship breakup (''heartbreak") demonstrate symptoms of depression, 2) how to describe heartbreak characteristics based on data from a comprehensive questionnaire battery, and 3) whether this description can capture severity of depression symptoms. Secondary, we were interested in gender differences with regard to the above study objectives. Subjects who have experienced a relationship breakup in the preceding six months (N = 71) or are in a romantic relationship (N = 46) participated in our study. A questionnaire battery was administered to acquire information related to depression, mood, the breakup and (former) relationship. Principal Component Analysis with Procrustes bootstrapping was performed to extract components from the questionnaire data. Even though our sample of individuals who recently have experienced a relationship breakup can be on average considered non-depressed, group-level depression scores were elevated compared to individuals in a relationship (p = .001) and 26.8% reported symptoms corresponding to mild, moderate or severe depression. We described heartbreak by two principal components interpreted as ''sudden loss" and ''lack of positive affect", respectively. Highly significant correlations between the component scores and depression scores were found (p < .001 and p < .001, respectively), although these correlations differed between the genders. Based on these findings, we propose that the experience of a romantic relationship breakup is a viable experimental model to examine symptoms of depression in individuals without a psychiatric disorder. This way, stress-related coping and depression vulnerability can be studied in further research.

Project description:Experiencing stress can have a disadvantageous effect on mental well-being. Additional to the relation between suffering from chronic stress and depression, both stress (acute and chronic) and depression are associated with cognitive alterations, including working memory. The breakup of a relationship is considered to be a stressful event that can lead to symptoms of depression in otherwise healthy people. Additional to elevated depression scores, stress-related cognitive alterations may occur in this population as well. Therefore, in the present fMRI study we investigated whether experiencing a relationship breakup is associated with working memory alterations and whether this is related to depressive symptom severity. A three workload version of the n-back task (0-back, 1-back, 2-back) was used to measure working memory in subjects who experienced a breakup in the preceding 6 months ("heartbreak group", n = 70) and subjects in a romantic relationship ("relationship group", n = 46). Behavioral task performance was compared between the two groups. Functional MRI scans were analyzed using General Linear Model (GLM) activation analyses. Workload conditions were contrasted to each other and to baseline and group differences were assessed. To investigate whether brain networks are associated with depressive symptom severity within the heartbreak group specifically, a post hoc feature-based Independent Component Analysis was performed on the 2-back > 0-back contrast images to identify brain regions that covaried across subjects. Behaviorally, the heartbreak group performed similar at high workload (i.e., 2-back) and better at moderate workload (i.e., 1-back) than the relationship group. GLM analysis revealed an interaction between group and 2-back > 0-back, 2-back > 1-back and 2-back > baseline; the heartbreak group showed less precuneus activation compared to the relationship group. Furthermore, within the heartbreak group, we found a negative association between depressive symptom severity and a brain network representing mostly the precuneus, anterior cingulate gyrus and supplementary motor cortex. Our findings suggest that the effect of a breakup is accompanied by workload-dependent working memory alterations. Therefore, we propose that this population can potentially be used to investigate the interplay between stress, cognitive functioning and depression.

Dataset Information

Comparing the effects of a mindfulness versus relaxation intervention on romantic relationship wellbeing.

Publications

Comparing the effects of a mindfulness versus relaxation intervention on romantic relationship wellbeing.

Similar Datasets

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