Integrative Yoga and Mindful Self-Compassion to Reduce Distress in Women Survivors of Interpersonal Violence

The overall objective of this Mentored Research Scientist Career Development Award is to support the PI’s transition to an independent investigator with a focus on using community-engaged approaches to develop and disseminate community-engaged mindfulness-based interventions to advance health and prevent disease. Interpersonal violence (IV) is commonly experienced among Black/African American (AA; 44%), Hispanic (34%), and Non-Hispanic White women (37%) in the US, as well as stigmatization related to IV and other attributes. Violence and stigma both drive “downstream” poor behavioral and physical health. Stigma sequelae – distress in response to stigma, anticipated (fear of) stigma, internalized stigma – independently foster shame and affect dysregulation, thus magnifying distress and consequent health impacts.

These IV sequelae can be alleviated by reducing distress, yet tailored transdiagnostic approaches to reduce survivor distress across racial and ethnic including minority groups that together account for a significant portion of violence victimization prevalence in the U.S. are rare. We propose to use community-engaged research to develop a complementary medicine program that integrates adapted Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) training with Trauma-Informed Yoga (TIY) to improve stigma sequelae and reduce distress in survivors: Integrated TIY and MSC (I-YMSC). MSC targets stigma-related problems (affect dysregulation, shame) and improves distress in the long-term, yet can temporarily increase short-term distress. TIY reduces short-term distress and promotes physiological-autonomic regulation.

The PI’s program evaluation data suggests adapting MSC to address stigma sequelae and integrating this approach with TIY is strongly warranted and has potential to ameliorate distress experienced by IV survivors. Further, training community yoga instructor survivors to teach I-YMSC represents an additional level of engagement with our stigmatized target population that is unusual in mindfulness research. In this K23 proposal, Black/AA, Hispanic, and White survivors will be equally represented across all project phases, with results considered both across participants and within each subgroup. Specific aims include: (1) (1.1) develop I-YMSC using community-engaged research with women IV survivor stakeholder partners, (1.2) pre-pilot the intervention in an open pilot trial to further refine the intervention, (1.3) develop a community-engaged teacher training, and (2) (2.1) conduct a 2-armed test of the behavioral intervention compared to a health education control to assess the feasibility and acceptability of the I-YMSC intervention, and (2.2) pilot the teacher training.

The essential hands-on learning and mentored training in this grant will support the PI in establishing her program of research as an independent investigator in community-engaged mind-body research to promote health, including with victims and survivors of violence.

Grant Number: 4K23AT011917-04
NIH Institute/Center: NIH
Principal Investigator: Tosca Braun