Mindfulness as a Rehabilitation Strategy in Schizophrenia

Objectives: Schizophrenia involves numerous difficulties including being aware of ones' own thoughts and tolerating painful affects. As a result, persons with schizophrenia find coping with life stressors quite challenging and thus have difficulty engaging successfully in psychosocial activities such as work in spite of state of the art programs. To address this problem this study will evaluate an intervention that has come to the fore that targets these impairments called mindfulness. Mindfulness involves teaching individuals skills that improve their ability to attend to their experience in the present moment while suspending judgment and to purposefully shift their attention. Thus mindfulness enhances the ability to monitor and manage emotions and thought processes so that individuals can reflect on, choose, and implement more effective responses. Use of mindfulness skills with other populations has led to more sustained behavior change than occurs with standard treatments. Recently research has begun to indicate mindfulness interventions can be delivered with success for individuals with schizophrenia. This pilot study will be a first step in adapting mindfulness as a cognitive intervention for individuals with schizophrenia who are engaging in vocational rehabilitation in order to maintain their functional gains beyond the end of the program. Key questions to be answered through this study include: (1) Can a mindfulness manual be developed that helps persons with schizophrenia enrolled in vocational rehabilitation exhibit better work function and reduced levels of distressing emotional states and thinking patterns?; (2) Can materials necessary for the faithful transmission of the mindfulness group intervention/manual (MGI) in the current study be created?; (3) Can mindfulness skills be adapted and successfully taught to and accepted by persons with schizophrenia in a group setting?: (4) Will individuals with schizophrenia who practice mindfulness benefit?; (5) What are the effect sizes with a reasonable control to study the effectiveness of the manualized MGI? Research Design: This study will take place over 3 years and is divided into two phases: manual development and pilot study. In the manual development phase existing mindfulness protocols will be adapted to target work function of persons with schizophrenia. The randomized controlled pilot study phase will explore the effects of the intervention on key outcome measures.

Methodology: A total of 52 individuals with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder will be recruited from the Roudebush VA Medical Center (18 in the non-randomized, non-controlled manual development phase 1 and 34 in the randomized controlled pilot phase 2). In phase one, manual development, 18 participants will be recruited and following informed consent, screened for eligibility using the SCID and anxiety measures. Once enrolled, three successive groups of 6 participants will attend an 8-week mindfulness program consisting of two 60-minute group training and practice sessions each week. The mindfulness program will incorporate didactic and experiential elements aimed at learning mindfulness skills and establishing a daily mindfulness practice. Based on the experience gained working with each of these three initial cohorts, a mindfulness manual will be created. In phase two, the pilot of the mindfulness manual, 34 additional participants will be recruited and randomized to the mindfulness intervention or support group control. All groups will complete assessments at baseline, monthly, at program end and 6 months after program end as well as formative and summative program evaluations.

Clinical Significance: Results of this study will yield materials necessary to begin the process of assembling a body of research validating scientifically the therapeutic value of mindfulness for veterans with schizophrenia who are enrolled in vocational rehabilitation. Findings may ultimately provide the VA system with information regarding a potentially cost effective approach to the care of these veterans who are disabled by a chronic mental illness that would be exportable to other VA vocational rehabilitation programs that have patients with schizophrenia.