The Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program is designed to cultivate conscious awareness (i.e., mindfulness) of one's experience in a non-judgmental or accepting manner (Kabat-Zinn, et al., 1990). Mindfulness programs may facilitate recovery from cancer. However, most prior mindfulness investigations for women with breast cancer focused on cancer survivors, well beyond the acute period of cancer diagnosis and treatment. Moreover, few of these studies evaluated immune measures with relevance to cancer.
Women diagnosed with early stage breast cancer (Stages 0, 1, 2, and 3) will be enrolled. Eligible women will be identified after completion of their breast surgery and when surgical pathology reports are available. Women will complete psychometric instruments and study questionnaires. They will provide blood for immune measures and saliva for cortisol diurnal rhythm. Measures will be done at five separate time points. These are pre-, mid-, and completion of either the MBSR or the attention control program, as well as at 1- and 6-months post-program. Demographic information and information about health behaviors will be collected by self-report. Wrist actigraphy for an additional assessment of sleep quality will be done in an exploratory manner. Hierarchical linear modeling will be used to compute multilevel model for change, based on full maximum likelihood estimation (Raudenbush, S. W., and A. S. Bryk. 2002). Hierarchical linear modeling will be applied to examine intra-individual and inter-individual differences in initial status (baseline) and trajectories of change over time.
