Mindfulness Training in Military Spouses

In addition to psychological and physical health challenges that military service members
face, military deployment is known to have deleterious effects on the entire family unit. The
January 2010 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine reported medical data from over
250,000 wives of deployed soldiers. These women suffered from clinically significant levels
of anxiety, depression, sleep disturbances, and adjustment disorders. Thus, the psychological
profile of military spouses sadly parallels that of the military servicemembers.
Unfortunately, the effect of deployment on the psychological health in military spouses is
largely unstudied, and very few resilience-building programs are available for military
families.

Prior research showed that mindfulness training (MT), as a resilience-building program in
civilian and military servicemembers, can effectively protect against degradation in of
executive functions (i.e., attention, working memory) and benefit psychological well-being
over high-demand intervals. While research evidence mounts that MT is beneficial for service
members, there is almost no research examining the impact of MT on military spouses'
cognitive functioning and psychological well-being.

The present study aims to investigate if MT may successfully benefit cognitive functioning
and psychological well-being in military spouses.

Inclusion Criteria:

- English-speaking

- Being in a relationship or married to U.S. Army active-duty member or veteran.

Exclusion Criteria:

- A non-controlled severe medical disease that might interfere with the performance in
the study.

- Any other condition that the investigator might deem problematic for the inclusion of
the volunteer in a training study of this nature.