Effects of meditation on health promoting protective factors of persons with cardiovascular disease-a quasi-experimental pilot study with pre-post comparison.

Background: The aim of this pilot study is to determine, in the context of a controlled intervention study, whether the health-promoting personal protective factors of sense of coherence, resilience, and self-compassion are strengthened by the practice of Metta meditation in individuals with cardiovascular disease. The interactions between mind and body play a pivotal role in health and mortality. Lifestyle factors and especially stress also play a decisive role in the development and progression of cardiovascular diseases. With health-promoting personal protective factors, which can be actively formed over the entire lifespan, stressors can be managed more adequately.

Methods: Data collection will be conducted as part of a controlled nonrandomized longitudinal pilot intervention study that will enrol individuals with cardiovascular disease (n=29). After the first interview, a 12-week Metta meditation course will start for the intervention group (IG) (n=9), while the control group (CG) (n=20) will receive no intervention. The Minnesota Living with Heart Failure^® Questionnaire (MLHFQ), the 13-item Sense of Coherence Scale (SOC-13), the Resilience Scale, the Self-Compassion Scale short form (SCS-sf) German version, the German version of the 10-item Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10), and the Stress Coping subscale of the Stress and Coping Inventory (SCI) are used at both measurement time (MT) points. In addition, blood pressure parameters are collected. Furthermore, selected literature will be consulted to integrate the evaluated data into existing research findings.

Results: The health-promoting personal competencies of sense of coherence, resilience, and self-compassion were not strengthened by the practice of Metta meditation in individuals with cardiovascular disease. However, there was a significant reduction in perceived stress {F[1, 27] =4.351, P=0.047, f=0.402} and improved stress coping skills {F[1, 26] =6.790, P=0.02, f=0.511} in the IG. Furthermore, the frequency of rehospitalization {F[1, 27] =5.607, P=0.03, f=0.456} differed significantly in the pre-post comparison.

Conclusions: Due to the insufficient size of the sample, the results are only exploratory in nature and should therefore only be considered preliminary. Also, the correlations between the significant changes in the parameters and Metta meditation cannot be finally assessed. For this purpose, further studies with larger samples are needed.