The Effects of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program for Family or Caregivers of Children With Motor Disabilities

Universitat de Lleida80 enrolled

Overview

The present study aims to investigate the effect of a mindfulness-based program on perceived stress, severity of anxiety, parents'/caregivers' quality of life and their children, cortisol and IL-6 blood concentrations.

Study Type

INTERVENTIONAL

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

SINGLE

Enrollment

Conditions

Stress, Psychological Stress, Emotional Stress

Interventions

Mindfulness-Based Stress reductionBEHAVIORAL

Participants assigned to the 8-week mindfulness program attended weekly 120-150 minute in-person group sessions for the entire duration. In these sessions, the instructor progressively will introduce and guide formal mindfulness practices while facilitating the sharing of experiences.

Eligibility

Sex: ALLMin age: 18 Years

Medical Language ↔ Plain English

Inclusion Criteria: * Not having attended previously a mindfulness course * A score equal to or greater than 23 points at the PSS. * \>18 years old * Children \<18y with motor/physical disability due to a Neurological disorder. * Spanish/Catalan speaking Exclusion Criteria: * Currently using drugs or any kind of medication related to stress, depression, anxiety or sleeping pills, such as steroid medicines. * Regular meditation practice (once a week in the past 12 months) * Diagnose of hypertension stage 2 * Pregnancy in the case of mothers * Present hyperthyroidism * Primary adrenal insufficiency syndromes such as Cushing syndrome or Addison disease * Present any kind of infection or inflammation process, different from the interestingly to the present study that could differ the results

Locations (1)

Claudia Arumi

Lleida, Spain

Outcomes

Primary Outcomes

Perceived Stress

To measure participants perceived stress, the Perceived Stress Scale 14 item Spanish version will be used (PSS 14). It consists of 14 items scored from 0 up to 4 (0=never, 1 = rarely 2= sometimes 3= usually 4 =almost always). The total scores on the scale can range from 0 (no stress) to 56 (extreme stress).

Time frame: baseline, two months (through study completion), and follow-up of one month

Cortisol levels

The cortisol measurement will be sampled with a serum blood test. It is recommended to advise the participants to be fasted. 63 Cortisol levels fluctuate throughout the day, being highest in the morning and lowest at night.63,64 The sample will be collected between 8-9 am to get the highest cortisol.

Time frame: baseline and two months (through study completion)

Secondary Outcomes

Severity of clinic anxiety

To measure the severity of clinic anxiety, the Bech Anxiety Inventory will be used. It consists of 21 self-administered questions about how the individual has been feeling the last week, expressed in common anxiety symptoms. It takes up to 5-10 minutes. Scores 0-7 indicate minimal anxiety, 8-15 mild anxiety, 16-25 moderate anxiety and 26-63 severe anxiety. Each item on the BAI includes an anxiety symptom and for each of them, the participant must assess the degree to which they have been affected by it during the last week. Possible answers are: not at all, mildly but it didn't bother me much, moderately it wasn't pleasant at times, severely it bothered me a lot. (0 to 3 respectively).

Time frame: baseline, two months (through study completion), and follow-up of one month

Sleep Quality

To measure sleep quality, the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) will be assessed. It is a self-rated questionnaire which assesses sleep quality and disturbances over a 1-month time interval. The instrument should require between 5 and 10 min for completion. The questionnaire consists of a combination of Likert-type and open-ended questions (later converted to scaled scores using provided guidelines). Respondents are asked to indicate how frequently they have experienced certain sleep difficulties over the past month and to rate their overall sleep quality. Scores for each question range from 0 to 3, with higher scores indicating more acute sleep disturbances. Developers have suggested a cutoff score of 5 for the global scale. The seven component scores are then combined to produce a global PSQI score, which ranges from 0 to 21; higher scores reflect poorer sleep quality

Data from ClinicalTrials.gov

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Quality of Life assessment

To measure the impact of paediatric chronic health conditions on parents and the family, the last developed PedsQL™ Family Impact Module will be used. The module measures multidimensions parent self-report; physical, emotional, social, and cognitive functioning, communication, and worry. It is used to assess health-related QoL in children aged 2-18 years. It takes up to 5-10 minutes to be completed.It assesses 8 main factors: physical functioning (6 items), emotional functioning (5 items), social functioning (4 items), cognitive functioning (4 items), communication (3 items), worry (5 items), daily activities (3 items) and family relationships (5 items). The answers are given on a 5-point Likert scale (0 = it is never a problem, 4 = it is almost always a problem) and are reversed scored and linearly transformed to a 0-100 scale (0 = 100, 1 = 75, 2 = 50, 3 = 25, 4 = 0) so that a greater score indicates better functioning

Time frame: baseline, two months (through study completion), and follow-up of one month