Mindful Learning Improves Positive Feelings of Cancer Patients’ Family Caregivers

Liuna Geng, Jian Wang, Liping Cheng, Binbin Zhang and Hui Shen
Additional contact information
Liuna Geng: School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210023, China
Jian Wang: School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210023, China
Liping Cheng: School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210023, China
Binbin Zhang: School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210023, China
Hui Shen: School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210023, China

IJERPH, 2019, vol. 16, issue 2, 1-9

Abstract: Positive feelings are an important health dimension for family caregivers of cancer patients. The aim of this study was to investigate whether Langerian mindfulness is a valid proactive method to increase the positive feelings of family caregivers for cancer patients. Participants were randomly assigned to either a mindfulness group or a mindlessness group and completed the Caregiver Reaction Assessment (CRA) as a measure of caregivers’ feelings before the intervention. Subsequently, both groups were given four sessions of mindfulness training using “innovation classification”. Finally, participants completed the Langer Mindfulness Scale (LMS) and the Positive Aspects of Caregiving (PAC) scale as post-intervention measures. The results revealed that participants in the mindfulness and mindlessness groups differed significantly in LMS and PAC scores, with the mindfulness group having higher levels of positive feelings than those in the mindlessness group. The results also indicated that mindfulness level significantly predicted positive feelings of caregivers. Thus mindful interventions may play a meaningful role in promoting family caregivers’ spirituality and faith, improving the willingness of sharing their thoughts, beliefs, and grief, which could be useful for increasing the positive feelings of caregivers.

Keywords: mindfulness; positive feelings; family caregivers; cancer patients (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/2/248/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/2/248/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:16:y:2019:i:2:p:248-:d:198239

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().