The Development of a Mindfulness Group for Stroke Patients: A Pilot Study
22nd January 2014
In partnership with the University of Portsmouth, Psychology Chartered conducted an innovative study exploring the impact of mindfulness for stroke patients.
Originating from Buddhism, mindfulness is a form of meditation which has growing evidence to support its effectiveness with a range of clinical conditions including depression and chronic pain.
150,000 people have a stroke in the UK each year, 10,000 of whom are working age. Whilst people are increasingly surviving after a stroke, they are often left with a variety of difficulties across their physical, emotional and cognitive functioning. Therefore, we have sought to understand how a mindfulness based intervention could be applied to a stroke population and explore any potential benefits from it.
After designing and delivering an 8 week Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy group for stroke patients, Psychology Chartered have gained an insight into how stroke patients’ experience a mindfulness based group and have realised its benefit in managing mood and potentially improving attentional abilities for this population. We hope this will enable further research into the benefits and guide the development of future mindfulness based groups for people who have had a stroke. We plan to conduct future research ourselves to further explore how mindfulness may be used to improve peoples attentional abilities after a stroke.
This research will soon be published in the Clinical Psychology Forum, if you would like to find out more about it or would like a copy of the article please contact Juanita Merriman, Assistant Psychologist at jmerriman@psychologychartered.co.uk.