Emotional benefits of mindfulness-based stress reduction in older adults: the moderating roles of age and depressive symptom severity.

OBJECTIVES

To examine the effects of age and depressive symptom severity on changes in positive affect among older adults randomly assigned to a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program or a Waitlist Control group. Drawing from the Motivational Theory of Life-Span Development, we hypothesized that lower levels of depressive symptom severity and older age would be associated with greater positive affect in response to the MBSR intervention.

METHODS

Data were collected from a sample of community-dwelling English-speaking adults (n = 200) aged ≥ 65, randomly assigned to an eight-week MBSR program or a Waitlist Control group. Our main outcome variable was a five-item measure of positive affect, which was measured at study entry as well as eight weeks and six months later.

RESULTS

At the six-month follow-up, we observed group by baseline depressive symptom severity (β = -.17, p = .02) and group by baseline depressive symptom severity by age (β = -.14, p = .05) interactions. Among MBSR participants, greater baseline depressive symptom severity was also associated with less improvement in positive affect at the six-month follow-up (β = -.30, p = .003). Findings were qualified by a significant depressive symptom severity by age interaction (β = -.25, p = .01), such that MBSR participants who were 70 and over with lower baseline depressive symptom severity having the greatest improvement in positive affect at the six-month follow-up.

CONCLUSION

MBSR improves positive affect for older adults with lower depressive symptom severity, perhaps because it capitalizes on naturalistic changes in control strategies.