Emotion-Focused Mindfulness Therapy: A Feasibility Study for Late Life Anxiety

The purpose of this small scale RCT is to determine the feasibility and acceptability of EFMT among community dwelling older adults who experience anxiety. This study has the following three aims: to determine if participants can be recruited, enrolled, and retained; to determine if participants can adhere to all components of the intervention; and to determine the extent to which participants who receive the intervention have decreased levels of anxiety compared to those who do not receive the intervention. The secondary outcomes will be to determine the extent to which participants who receive the intervention have improved sleep quality, and improved subjective memory functioning compared to those who do not receive the intervention. This will be a small pilot RCT study that will use a wait list control trial design. Participants will be randomly allocated to either the intervention or control group. Emotion-Focused Mindfulness Therapy (EFMT) is a group intervention consisting of eight weekly meetings of 2.5 hours with 10 - 12 participants per group. Participants are provided instruction that encourages noting and experiencing bodily sensations and emotions during meditations. Meditations are conducted in silence for between twenty and thirty-five minutes, and then participants are asked to journal their recollection of the meditation and experiences that arise for them as they journal. Following journalling, each participant describes their experience in meditation, with the facilitator offering empathic exploration to support transforming negative emotions into adaptive emotions. The study will be conducted in an online delivery PHIPPA protected platform and has been modified to accommodate electronic delivery. Maximum number of participants per group will be six, and each session will be 1.5 hours. Data will be collected at three points by a research assistant to evaluate the feasibility of EFMT for older adults and determine whether anxiety is influenced by the intervention.

Inclusion Criteria: * Participants will be community dwelling older adults at least 65 years of age and with have no existing therapeutic alliance with the PI. Inclusion criteria will be a diagnosis or self-report of anxiety. The presence of symptoms of anxiety will be assessed using the Geriatric Anxiety Inventory (GAI) with a cut off score of 10 which indicates the presence of anxiety (Johnco et al., 2015). Participants will be willing to commit to an eight-week program. Exclusion Criteria: * Exclusion criteria will be beginning or stopping psychotropic medications within the previous six weeks and concurrent participation in any other mindfulness-based group during the study. Participants will not be excluded if they have prior experience with mindfulness. Further exclusion criteria will be a Telephone Montreal Cognitive Assessment (T-MoCA) cut off score of 19 which indicates the possibility of mild cognitive impairment.