Mindfulness interventions for offsetting health risk following early life stress: Promising directions
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Abstract
Early life stress (ELS), common to childhood maltreatment, socioeconomic disadvantage, and racial discrimination, is thought to create a proinflammatory phenotype that increases risk for poor health in adulthood. Systemic change is needed to address the root causes of ELS, but a substantial number of adults are already at increased health risk by virtue of ELS exposure. Interventions that target stress pathways have the potential to interrupt the trajectory from ELS to inflammatory disease risk in adulthood. Mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs), which train acceptance toward present-moment experience, have shown promise for reducing stress and improving a variety of stress-sensitive health outcomes. Although MBIs have primarily been conducted in more advantaged populations, evidence suggests that they may be uniquely effective for improving mental health and health-related quality of life among those with a history of ELS. Whether these effects extend to physical health remains unknown. To shed light on this question, I review evidence that MBIs influence inflammatory markers in at-risk samples, explore the promise of MBIs for improving stress-related health outcomes in diverse at-risk populations, and describe adaptations to MBIs that may increase their acceptability and efficacy in populations exposed to ELS. This prior work sets the stage for well-controlled RCTs to evaluate whether MBIs influence stress and inflammatory pathways among those exposed to ELS and for pragmatic and implementation trials focused on disseminating MBIs to reach these at-risk populations. Overall, the evidence assembled here shows the potential of MBIs for offsetting physical health risk related to ELS.
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Flagged first, then by citations
- Authors
- Lindsay, E. K.
- Affiliations
- University of Pittsburgh (US)
- Corresponding author
- Lindsay, Emily K.
- ORCID
- Lindsay, Emily K.
- Venue
- Brain, Behavior, & Immunity - Health
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2021-11
- Volume
- 17
- Pages
- 100338
- ISSN
- 2666-3546 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC8474678
- OpenAlex
- W3197133988
- Cited by
- 10
- References
- 56
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 2 · 2022: 2
- FWCI
- 1.19
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Brain Behavior & Immunity - Health (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, other-oa)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- MindRxiv (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion)
- MindRxiv (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Mindfulness and Compassion Interventions
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Child Abuse and Trauma
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Behavioral Neuroscience › Stress Responses and Cortisol
- Keywords
- mindfulness-based interventions, early life stress, child abuse, socioeconomic deprivation, racial discrimination, inflammation, inflammatory markers, physical health risks, intervention adaptation, implementation trial, dissemination
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