18-month meditation program improves psychological well-being in older adults

Following an 18-month meditation program can improve well-being in older adults, according to a new randomized controlled trial by an international team led by UCL.

The findings, published in PLOS ONEshow that meditation can improve people’s awareness, connection with others, and insight.

While meditation training did not provide significant benefits on two commonly used measures of psychological well-being and quality of life, the researchers say their findings may reveal limitations in existing methods of monitoring well-being.

As the world’s population ages, it is increasingly important to understand how we can support older adults in maintaining and deepening their psychological well-being. In our study, we tested whether long-term meditation training can enhance important dimensions of well-being. Our findings suggest that meditation is a promising non-pharmacological approach to support human flourishing in late life.”

Marco Schlosser, Lead author, UCL Psychiatry and University of Geneva

The study is the largest randomized trial of meditation training to date and investigated the impact of an 18-month meditation program on the psychological well-being of more than 130 healthy French-speaking people aged 65 to 84. The study, led by Principal Investigator Professor Gaël Chételat, took place in Caen, France. It was conducted by the Medit-Ageing (Silver Santé Study) research group funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020, which includes UCL, Inserm, University of Geneva, Université de Caen Normandy, Lyon Neuroscience Research Center, University of Liège, Technische Universität Dresden and Friedrich Schiller University Jena.

The researchers compared a meditation programme, which included a nine-month mindfulness module followed by a nine-month loving-kindness and compassion module, delivered by weekly group sessions (two hours long), daily home practice (at least 20 minutes) and a retreat day , with a group that received English language training (as a comparison group) and a control group without intervention.

The team found that meditation training significantly affected an overall score measuring the well-being dimensions of awareness, connectedness, and insight. Mindfulness describes an undivided and intimate attention to one’s thoughts, feelings, and surroundings, which can support a sense of calm and deep contentment. Connection captures feelings such as respect, gratitude, and relatedness that can support more positive relationships with others. Insight refers to a self-awareness and understanding of how thoughts and feelings participate in shaping our perception – and how to transform unhelpful thought patterns related to ourselves and the world.

The benefits of meditation training on an established measure of psychological quality of life were not superior to English language training, while neither intervention significantly affected another widely used measure of psychological well-being. The researchers suggest that this may be because these two established measures do not capture the qualities and depth of human flourishing that can potentially be cultivated with long-term meditation training, so benefits for awareness, connection, and insight are missed.

The program did not benefit everyone equally, as participants who reported lower levels of psychological well-being at the start of the trial showed greater improvements compared to those who already had higher levels of well-being.

Co-author Dr Natalie Marchant (UCL Psychiatry) said: “We hope that further research will clarify which people are most likely to benefit from meditation training, as it may offer stronger benefits to certain groups. Now that we have evidence that the meditation training can help the elderly, we hope that further improvements in collaboration with colleagues from other research disciplines could make meditation programs even more beneficial.”

Senior author Dr Antoine Lutz (Lyon Neuroscience Research Centre, Inserm, France) said: “By showing the potential of meditation programs, our findings pave the way for more targeted and effective programs that can help older adults flourish as we strive to go beyond simply preventing disease or ill health and instead take a holistic approach to helping people across the spectrum of human well-being.”