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From the Heart: Comparing the Effects of Spiritual and Secular Meditation on Psychophysiology, Cognition, Mental Health, and Social Functioning in Healthy Adults

C

Coventry University

Status

Enrolling

Conditions

Empathy
Mental Well-being
Depression
Prosocial Behavior
Anxiety
Attention
Pain
Forgiveness
Stress

Treatments

Behavioral: Arm 1 - Heart-Centred Spiritual Meditation: Christian contemplation
Behavioral: Arm 1 - Heart-Centred Spiritual Meditation: Islamic contemplation
Behavioral: Arm 2 - Action Control: Mindfulness Meditation

Study type

Interventional

Funder types

Other

Identifiers

NCT06136676
0595 (Other Grant/Funding Number)
TWCF0595

Details and patient eligibility

About

The purpose of this study is to investigate and compare the effects of Christian and Islamic heart-centred spiritual meditation to mindfulness meditation and waitlist control conditions, respectively, in healthy adults. The potential effects will be studied at multiple levels, with a focus on psychophysiology, cognition, mental health, and social functioning.

Full description

Background

Secular forms of meditation have been widely accepted as an effective tool to promote well-being and as therapeutic strategies. The popularity of such practices, most notably mindfulness meditation, can be attributed to the substantial body of research on their beneficial effects in the past few decades. While these practices are loosely based on Eastern traditions, and actively reduce emotional reactivity, some Western spiritual meditations have retained their God-centred focus and aim to elicit strong emotions. The current study aims to examine the effects of heart-centred contemplation based on Christian and Islamic traditions on mental, physical, cognitive, and social well-being, compare the outcomes of these exercises to mindfulness meditation, and investigate the external correlates of the outcomes.

Aims

The present study aims to recruit healthy adults to investigate and compare the effects of Christian and Islamic heart-centred spiritual meditation to mindfulness meditation (Mindfulness-based stress reduction; MBSR) and waitlist control, respectively. The potential effects will be examined using measures from multiple domains, with a focus on psychophysiology, cognition, mental health, and social functioning. Additionally, the study aims to examine the possible external correlates of the outcomes by testing perspective-taking, affect, religiosity, spiritual experiences, closeness to God, closeness to the offender, and credibility/expectancies about the spiritual meditation program. The study seeks to understand the impact of different types of meditation practices on the well-being of individuals.

Participants

This study will apply a mixed method repeated measures design to examine a three-arm stratified randomised control trial with healthy samples of Christians and Muslims in multiple testing centres in India. Assessments will be conducted at three time points: pre-intervention (T1), after intervention (T2), and at a 3-month follow-up (T3). Eligible participants will be first stratified into Christian and Islamic samples and then randomly allocated to one of the three conditions: religious contemplation (either Christian or Islamic spiritual meditation based on their religions), mindfulness meditation, or waitlist control.

Administration of intervention

The intervention will consist of an 8-week app-based program, including approximately 20-minute daily audio-guided instructions of either one of the spiritual meditations or mindfulness meditation. Participants from the waitlist control will not receive any intervention, but they will be given access to Christian or Islamic meditation app after the experiment is completed.

Outcome measures

Outcome measures consist of domains related to interpersonal functioning, physiology, attention, mental health, spirituality.

Primary outcomes will be the interpersonal functioning domain including measures of prosociality, forgiveness, empathy, and perspective taking.

Secondary outcomes include domains concerning physiology, attention, and mental health. Physiology domain encompasses pain tolerance, pain intensity, stress reactivity (heart rate and heart rate variability), psychophysiological reactivity associated with forgiveness (heart rate and heart rate variability). Attention domain includes measures of alerting attention, orienting attention, and executive attention networks. Mental health domain involves self-reported stress, depression, anxiety, subjective well-being, and positive and negative affect.

Enrollment

288 estimated patients

Sex

All

Ages

18 to 60 years old

Volunteers

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

  • 18 to 60 years old
  • able to read, speak and understand English
  • willing to be randomly assigned to all the conditions, with religious affiliation restricting allocation to either the Christian or Islamic type of spiritual meditation conditions
  • consider oneself to be a Christian or Muslim and pray at least weekly

Exclusion criteria

  • currently suffer from any mental health conditions or use medication to manage mental health conditions
  • long-term serious physical medical problems, such as liver, brain, kidney, or other life-threatening chronic diseases
  • a history of a heart condition, high blood pressure, Raynaud syndrome, diabetes, or musculoskeletal condition
  • the current use of anxiolytics/mood stabilizers.

Trial design

Primary purpose

Basic Science

Allocation

Randomized

Interventional model

Parallel Assignment

Masking

Single Blind

288 participants in 3 patient groups

Heart-centred spiritual meditation
Experimental group
Description:
Intervention 1: Christian contemplation and Intervention 2: Islamic contemplation
Treatment:
Behavioral: Arm 1 - Heart-Centred Spiritual Meditation: Islamic contemplation
Behavioral: Arm 1 - Heart-Centred Spiritual Meditation: Christian contemplation
Mindfulness Meditation (MBRS)
Active Comparator group
Description:
Intervention 3: Mindfulness Meditation (MBRS)
Treatment:
Behavioral: Arm 2 - Action Control: Mindfulness Meditation
Waitlist control
No Intervention group
Description:
No Intervention: Participants in this condition will not receive any intervention and the outcome measures will be only collected at time points T1 and T2. After T2 testing, they will be given access to either the Christian or Islamic intervention.

Trial contacts and locations

2

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Central trial contact

Chung Fei Ng

Data sourced from clinicaltrials.gov

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