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People living with mild dementia are able to engage in mindfulness activities
2 July 2018
A UCL-led study has suggested that people living with mild dementia are as able to engage in mindfulness-based activities as those not living with dementia.
Previous studies have suggested that mindfulness-based interventions could improve mood and cognition in people with dementia and that they could benefit from a mindfulness-based group intervention. However, it had not been established whether any structured group activity - not necessarily just mindfulness practice - would produce the same benefits, particularly since dementia may impact mindful attention ability.
A research team led by Dr Joshua Stott, UCL Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology (Division of Psychology and Language Sciences) investigated the potential impact of having dementia on mindful attention. They compared the performance of 34 people with dementia, recruited from memory services, with 55 community-recruited older people, on measures of mindful attention, cognitive flexibility, and current cognition, as well as putative other factors which may influence mindfulness; depression, anxiety and premorbid intellectual ability. The groups differed significantly on a range of demographic characteristics and some neuropsychological and mood measures.
At the outset of the study, the researchers' primary prediction was that there would be a large effect size difference between groups, with people with dementia performing significantly more poorly on a measure of mindful attention to breath. Their secondary prediction was that performance on this measure would positively correlate with measures of cognitive flexibility and overall cognition.
However, neither prediction was supported, as there was no difference in mindful attention to breath between the participants with dementia and those without dementia. The researchers concluded that although this is a preliminary proof of concept study and future research is needed, possibly a diagnosis of mild dementia may not have a large effect on mindful attention, with the implication that people with dementia might be able to engage with this key aspect of mindfulness in clinical practice.
Further research could replicate this finding using other measures of mindful attention and should examine whether people with dementia can improve their mindful attention abilities with training.
Dr Stott said, "People living with dementia are often anxious or depressed and this can have highly deleterious effects on a number of outcomes. It is often assumed that they can't engage with psychological therapies to help with this.
"However this study along with some others starts to suggest that maybe they can. Future research is needed to examine this further. In particular it will be important to examine whether people with dementia can improve their mindful attention over the course of psychological therapy."
This research was funded by Alzheimer's Society.
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