Mindfulness-Based Stress ReductionMindfulness-Based Stress Reduction With Older Adults Living With Cognitive Impairment in Primary Care.

People living with subjective cognitive decline (SCD) or mild cognitive impairment (MCI) experience less efficiency in performing complex everyday tasks, which may result in a general sense of discontentment and decreased satisfaction with their overall functional performance. Additionally, SCD and MCI have been associated with concomitant anxiety, depressive mood, perceived stress, a decrease in emotional well-being and quality-of-life (QoL) among community-dwelling older adults. These concomitant psychosocial issues may result in emotional distress which further exacerbates cognitive decline.

At the present time, there is a lack of evidence that supports pharmacologic interventions to ameliorate concomitant psychosocial issues with this particular population due to medication side-effects, drug-drug interaction and polypharmacy. Consequently, exploring alternative non-pharmacological interventions to assist in ameliorating psychosocial issues is an important consideration. Secondly, evaluating perceived satisfaction on functional performance with those living with SCD and MCI, and assessing interventions that may support this is also worthwhile to pursue. Primary care providers are often the first point of contact when older adults and their families become concerned about memory problems. Health care professionals, on an interdisciplinary Family Health Team (FHT), such as occupational therapists, are well-positioned to holistically address both the psychosocial and functional needs in a client/family centred way with this growing population in primary care. The study proposes to offer a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program, which is an 8-week program that has been shown to be beneficial in alleviating emotional distress among adults living with physical and psychological issues in the general population.