Frontiers in psychology
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Frontiers in psychology · Jan 2017
The Effectiveness of a Body-Affective Mindfulness Intervention for Multiple Sclerosis Patients with Depressive Symptoms: A Randomized Controlled Clinical Trial.
Purpose: Mindfulness interventions have been shown to treat depressive symptoms and improve quality of life in patients with several chronic diseases, including multiple sclerosis, but to date most evaluation of the effectiveness of mindfulness interventions in multiple sclerosis have used patients receiving standard care as the control group. Hence we decided to evaluate the effectiveness of a group-based body-affective mindfulness intervention by comparing it with a psycho-educational intervention, by means of a randomized controlled clinical trial. The outcome variables (i.e., depression, anxiety, perceived stress, illness perception, fatigue and quality of life) were evaluated at the end of the interventions (T1) and after a further 6 months (T2). ⋯ A whole-sample intention-to-treat (ITT) analysis broadly confirmed the effectiveness of the mindfulness intervention. Conclusion: In conclusion, these results provide methodologically robust evidence that in multiple sclerosis patients with depressive symptoms mindfulness interventions improve symptoms of depression and anxiety and perceived stress, modulate illness representation and enhance quality of life and that the benefits are maintained for at least 6 months. Trial registration: the study was registered in the ClinicalTrials.gov registry (NCT02611401).
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Frontiers in psychology · Jan 2017
Efficacy of 8- and 4-Session Mindfulness-Based Interventions in a Non-clinical Population: A Controlled Study.
Background: Many attempts have been made to abbreviate mindfulness programmes in order to make them more accessible for general and clinical populations while maintaining their therapeutic components and efficacy. The aim of this study was to assess the efficacy of an 8-week mindfulness-based intervention (MBI) programme and a 4-week abbreviated version for the improvement of well-being in a non-clinical population. Method: A quasi-experimental, controlled, pilot study was conducted with pre-post and 6-month follow-up measurements and three study conditions (8- and 4-session MBI programmes and a matched no-treatment control group, with a sample of 48, 46, and 47 participants in each condition, respectively). ⋯ The efficacy of abbreviated mindfulness programmes may be similar to that of a standard MBI programme, making them potentially more accessible for a larger number of populations. Nevertheless, further studies with more powerful designs to compare the non-inferiority of the abbreviated protocol and addressing clinical populations are warranted. Clinical Trials.gov Registration ID: NCT02643927.
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Objectives: When physical exercise is systematically coupled to music production, exercisers experience improvements in mood, reductions in perceived effort, and enhanced muscular efficiency. The physiology underlying these positive effects remains unknown. Here we approached the investigation of how such musical agency may stimulate the release of endogenous opioids indirectly with a pain threshold paradigm. ⋯ Musical agency explained 25% of the variance in cold pressor test withdrawal times after factoring out individual differences in general pain sensitivity. Conclusions: This result demonstrates a substantial pain reducing effect of musical agency in combination with physical exercise, probably due to stimulation of endogenous opioid mechanisms. This has implications for exercise endurance, both in sports and a multitude of rehabilitative therapies in which physical exercise is effective but painful.
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Frontiers in psychology · Jan 2017
Are Empowered Employees More Proactive? The Contingency of How They Evaluate Their Leader.
Finding ways to enhance employee proactive behavior is a focal concern for academics and practitioners. Previous studies have found a positive association between empowering leadership and proactive behavior (Martin et al., 2013; Li et al., 2017). However, these studies lack elaboration on mechanisms and do not rule out the effect of employees' proactive personality during empirical testing. ⋯ Our research proposes a more elaborated theoretical model that explains why, and when, empowering leadership might promote employee proactive behavior. Specifically, we examine mediating mechanisms based on social cognitive theory and propose trust in leader competency as boundary condition. Using a sample of 280 leader-follower dyads from a large state-owned Chinese company, our results revealed that (1) empowering leadership was positively related to proactive behavior, with role breadth self-efficacy acting as a mediator for this relationship; (2) employees' trust in leader competency moderated both the empowering leadership-subordinate proactive behavior relationship and the mediating effect of role breadth self-efficacy, such that the empowering leadership-subordinate proactive behavior relationship was weaker, and the mediating effect of role breadth self-efficacy was stronger, for employees with high levels of trust in leader competency.
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Frontiers in psychology · Jan 2017
Long-Time Exposure to Violent Video Games Does Not Show Desensitization on Empathy for Pain: An fMRI Study.
As a typical form of empathy, empathy for pain refers to the perception and appraisal of others' pain, as well as the corresponding affective responses. Numerous studies investigated the factors affecting the empathy for pain, in which the exposure to violent video games (VVGs) could change players' empathic responses to painful situations. ⋯ And then, the functional magnetic resonance imaging data were recorded when they were viewing painful and non-painful stimuli. The results showed that the perception of others' pain were not significantly different in brain regions between groups, from which we could infer that the desensitization effect of VVGs was overrated.