This application, """"""""Mindfulness-Based Trauma Interventions: Healing the Whole Person"""""""" outlines a research program for developing an Intervention Development to Services: Exploratory Research Grant (R34). Our overall goal is to address the huge mental health care disparity for low-income, minority women exposed to intimate partner violence by obtaining new knowledge and skills in order to develop and test an accessible, tailored, and culturally-appropriate mindfulness-based intervention suitable as a first-line intervention or delivery in non-mental health community settings. Mindfulness is described as """"""""bringing one's complete attention to the present experience on a moment- to-moment basis"""""""" (Marlatt &Kristeller, 1999, p. 68). Mindfulness interventions have been developed to address an array of physical and mental health problems (Baer, 2003). However, none address the needs of trauma populations. The devastating effects of violence extend to both mental and physical health problems. Notably, violence has been identified as one of the ten leading health indicators in Health People 2010. PTSD is a particularly prevalent outcome of IPV, with some studies reporting more than three- quarters of battered women meeting diagnostic criteria (e.g., Jones, 2001;Kemp, et al. 1995). To narrow the remarkable mental health disparities gap, three interrelated studies using different methodologies will be conducted to develop and pilot test an adapted mindfulness-based trauma intervention. This application has three specific aims all of which are congruent with the stated mission of the NIMH R34: 1) to develop a mindfulness-based trauma intervention for PTSD and other trauma-related psychological (depression, somatic symptoms, quality of life). Intervention development will include writing intervention and training manuals, developing measures of intervention fidelity, and pre-piloting the intervention for feasibility and accountability;2) to pilot test the interventions with low-income, predominately African-American women exposed to intimate partner violence and to examine potential mediators (mindfulness, coping self- efficacy, social support) of improved outcomes, and 3) to pilot test measures of the cost of administering the intervention. This pilot study will provide preliminary data for a rigorous large scale clinical trial to examine both self-report and biological outcomes of the mindfulness-based trauma intervention. Mindfulness is described as """"""""bringing one's complete attention to the present experience on a moment-to-moment basis"""""""" (Marlatt &Kristeller, 1999, p. 68). The purpose of the application, """"""""Mindfulness-Based Trauma Interventions: Healing the Whole Person"""""""" is to develop and test a mindfulness-based intervention that is appropriate and suitable in community settings for women with a history of intimate partner violence and who are experiencing symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder. This application has three specific aims all of which are congruent with the stated mission of the NIMH R34: 1) to develop a mindfulness-based trauma intervention for PTSD and other trauma-related psychological (depression, somatic symptoms, quality of life);2) to pilot test the interventions with low-income, African-American women exposed to intimate partner violence, and 3) to measure the cost of administering the intervention. This pilot study will provide preliminary data for a rigorous large scale clinical trial to examine both self- report and biological outcomes of the mindfulness-based trauma intervention.
| Myers, Neely; Lewis, Sara; Dutton, Mary Ann (2015) Open Mind, Open Heart: An Anthropological Study of the Therapeutics of Meditation Practice in the US. Cult Med Psychiatry 39:487-504 |
| Dutton, Mary Ann; Bermudez, Diana; Matas, Armely et al. (2013) Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction for Low-Income, Predominantly African American Women With PTSD and a History of Intimate Partner Violence. Cogn Behav Pract 20:23-32 |
| Bermudez, Diana; Benjamin, Michelle T; Porter, Sarah E et al. (2013) A qualitative analysis of beginning mindfulness experiences for women with post-traumatic stress disorder and a history of intimate partner violence. Complement Ther Clin Pract 19:104-8 |
