Psychosocial Correlates of Adherence to Mind-Body Interventions

Mind-body interventions involve practices that intentionally combine mental and physical fitness, showing promise for improving psychological and cognitive health in older adults. Limited research exists on adherence to these interventions and the demographic and psychosocial factors that may predict variability in compliance. In the current study, we identified key correlates-demographic, psychosocial, and cognitive-of adherence to two mind-body interventions. Baseline and intervention data were analyzed together from a randomized controlled trial of older adults who participated in two four-week mind-body interventions and completed practice logs (n = 60). Adherence was defined as the average weekly self-reported minutes of homework practice during the intervention. Baseline correlates included education, sex assigned at birth, working memory score, emotion dysregulation, positive and negative affect, trait mindfulness, and depression. Partial least squares regression was used to identify latent components. A significant one-component solution from the final model explained 23.08% of the variance in practice minutes. Greater adherence was associated with mild depressive symptoms, difficulties with emotion regulation, and lower working memory scores. These findings suggest that participants with mild emotional and cognitive difficulties may be more likely to adhere to mind-body interventions. These results emphasize the target population likely to engage in mind-body interventions and may be valuable for designing tailored interventions and developing strategies to maximize adherence. This study was registered on ClinicalTrials.gov (#NCT03432754) on February 14, 2018.