Compassion Meditation for Older Adults

"10 weekly 90-minute sessions. Sessions 1-3 assist participants in basic mindfulness breathing practices; sessions 4-8 focus on personal analysis of factors underlying difficulties with compassion for self or others; sessions 9 and 10 review content and assist with relapse prevention.~\[These were planned as in-person groups but due to the COVID-19 social distancing requirements that started after initiation of cohort 1, the investigators had to retool the intervention for telehealth delivery.\]"

"The investigators planned to administer a 10-week psychoeducational in-person group focused on topics in healthy aging to examine its feasibility as a control condition for a subsequent randomized controlled trial. This would include use of an existing library of videotaped community-focused talks, such as increasing happiness, mental resilience and health, nutrition, and physical activity.~\[Unfortunately, with the switch to telehealth format necessitated by the COVID-19 social distancing requirements, the consensus of the investigators and staff was that these proved too be too dry/dull/academic to be a credible attention control in a telehealth format for the target population.\]"