Health Informatics Associations Between Mindfulness Traits and Health Outcomes in Veterans with Chronic Multi-symptom Illness

Abstract

Behavioral health interventions and lifestyle medicine intended to augment wellness and resilience, offer promising solutions to chronic disease management for Veterans. We aimed to test the broad-spectrum benefits of trait mindfulness and identify facets of mindfulness with the most profound effect on Veteran’s overall health and neuropsychological performance, and to identify neural markers of mindfulness facets. Veteran participants (n = 145, age = 44–77; male = 117) who were: (a) U.S. Gulf War Veteran and (b) meet CDC CMI criteria and assessed using a cross-modal design. Nineteen participants (age = 52–71, gender = 17M, 2F) underwent EEG session. We measured trait mindfulness using the Five Facet Mindfulness questionnaire and looked at associations with multi-modal health outcomes using standard health questionnaires, neuropsychological performance and electroencephalography (EEG). Factor analysis revealed that trait mindfulness dimensions support a dual-factor framework: (a) Proactive factor comprised of Awareness, Describing and Non-Judging loaded; (b) Reactive factor comprised of Observing and Non-Reactivity. Structural modeling was applied to the highest loaded FFMQ dimensions for each factor and outcome variables. Proactive factor was significantly associated with higher scores on self-reported health and psychological performance measures. The two factors of mindfulness showed preliminary associations with distinct EEG spatial-temporal features of alpha rhythm suggesting distinct neuronal sources of proactive and reactive factors of mindfulness. Higher trait mindfulness specifically the proactive factor promotes resiliency to adverse health outcomes and higher cognitive performance with quantifiable neural representations. These findings suggest that mindfulness programs targeting the proactive factor could maximize mindfulness related improvement in health outcomes.