Mindfulness meditation may help men with prostate cancer who choose “watchful waiting” over treatment deal with their anxiety, a new study says.
“Watchful waiting,” known also as “active surveillance," is a program in which patients with early stage prostate cancer are monitored for signs of tumor progression in place of more aggressive treatment.
But the anxiety and uncertainty surrounding this decision causes one in four patients to change their minds later on even though it may not be medically necessary, researchers at Northwestern University in Chicago say.
So they decided to see if mindfulness meditation, a well-known contemplative awareness technique designed to develop skills including acceptance and patience, could help patients in such a situation deal with the uncertainty that “watchful waiting,” entails.
Their pilot study showed that such patients who received mindfulness training reported significantly greater resilience and less anxiety over time after receiving an intervention of mindfulness meditation.
The research team is now partnering with other academic medical institutions to conduct a five-year multi-site controlled trial where men and their spouses will be randomized to eight weeks of intensive mindfulness meditation training or an eight-week control group.