Mindful parenting decreases aggression and increases social behavior in children with developmental disabilities.

Research shows that after training in the philosophy and practice of mindfulness, parents can mindfully attend to the challenging behaviors of their children with autism. Parents also report an increased satisfaction with their parenting skills and social interactions with their children. These findings were replicated and extended with 4 parents of children who had developmental disabilities, exhibited aggressive behavior, and had limited social skills. After mindfulness training, the parents were able to decrease aggressive behavior and increase their children's social skills. They also reported a greater practice of mindfulness, increased satisfaction with their parenting, more social interactions with their children, and lower parenting stress. Furthermore, the children showed increased positive and decreased negative social interactions with their siblings. We speculate that mindfulness produces transformational change in the parents that is reflected in enhanced positive behavioral transactions with their children.

Mindful staff increase learning and reduce aggression in adults with developmental disabilities.

Aggression by individuals with developmental disabilities may threaten their community placement. In a multiple baseline design across group homes, we provided group home staff with behavioral training and later with mindfulness training to assess the impact on aggressive behaviors and the number of learning objectives mastered by individuals in their care. We also assessed other outcomes including activities engaged in by the individuals, use of restraint by staff, and measures of satisfaction. The effect of varying staff-resident ratios was evaluated on all measures. When compared to baseline, the number of staff interventions for aggression showed some reduction following behavioral training, but decreased substantially only following mindfulness training. There was also some increase in the number of learning objectives mastered by the individuals following behavioral training, but greater and more consistent increases were obtained only after mindfulness training. Improvements also occurred on the other measures assessed after behavioral training, but these were always greater and more consistent following mindfulness training. In addition, consistent gains followed behavioral training only with a high staff-resident ratio whereas the larger gains after mindfulness training occurred with both medium and low staff-resident ratios. Our results suggest that the addition of mindfulness training considerably enhanced the ability of the group home staff to effectively manage the aggressive behavior and learning of the individuals.

Ten years of treating eating disorders: what have we learned? A personal perspective on the application of 12-step and wellness programs.

Conventional therapy for eating disorders has focused on behavioral approaches, medical models, and combinations of both, with lesser emphasis on psychological and wellness models. Because eating disorders are often difficult to treat and the individuals who have them often exhibit significant comorbidities, the long-term success rate (3-5 years or more)-defined as recovery and abstinence from the disorder behaviors-is in the 40% to 50% range, at best. Moreover, if one examines randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that test the efficacy of the most commonly used behavioral approaches in a historical manner, as is described in this article, by assigning RCTs to 2 different time periods for the treatment of bulimia nervosa (BN), it is found that no progress has been made in the success rate of treating this disorder. Many reasons exist for this lack of progress, including comorbidities, failure of patient-therapist relationships to be dynamic, failure to appreciate that BN and binge eating disorder have addiction components that might require 12-step or multimodal approaches, and an absence of treating the whole person, which requires using a wellness model and elements such as body awareness exercises, yoga, and spirituality. Based on a review of the literature and my personal experience over the last 10 years, it is suggested that best practices for treating these disorders should include wellness and 12-step models that focus less on self-centeredness, highlighting the strengths of the person and helping individuals to find their true spirituality, which can be used as a focal point for all treatment. Conventional approaches can still be useful in treating eating disorders, but clinicians and psychiatrists should cease seeing eating disorders as "diseases" that should be treated by pharmacodynamics and consider that these are conditions that have taken many years to develop and that have many background psychological factors, often reaching back to childhood.

A mindfulness-based health wellness program for an adolescent with Prader-Willi syndrome.

Individuals with Prader-Willi syndrome have hyperphagia, a characteristic eating disorder defined by a marked delay in the satiety response when compared to controls. This eating disorder has been particularly difficult to control. The authors taught and evaluated effectiveness of regular exercise alone, regular exercise plus healthy eating, and mindfulness-based strategies combined with exercise and healthy eating to an adolescent with this syndrome. Mindfulness-based strategies included mindful eating, visualizing and labeling hunger, and rapidly shifting attention away from hunger by engaging in Meditation on the Soles of the Feet. On average, when compared to baseline levels, there were decreases in weight with regular exercise and exercise plus healthy eating, but the most consistent and sustained changes were evidenced when mindfulness training was added to exercise and healthy eating. The adolescent continued using the mindfulness health wellness program and further reduced his weight during the 3-year follow-up period.