Investigating Mindfulness Therapy for Movement and Psychological Symptoms in Parkinson's

This is a an 8-week mindfulness program for reducing movement symptoms and psychological distress in individuals with Parkinson's disease: 8-week duration; 10-min app-based sessions 5 days a week, 40-min online group meditation session once a week, 50-min consultation and group meditation session once a month. All of the sessions will involve guided mindfulness exercises that cover the five key concepts of mindfulness: observing, describing, acting with awareness, nonjudging of inner experience, and nonreactivity to inner experience. The weekly and monthly group sessions will be held via Zoom by experienced mindfulness mentors. Both weekly and month sessions will involve a group mindfulness exercise. During the monthly sessions, participants are given the opportunity to ask the mentors any questions that they might have about mindfulness practice. During mindfulness exercise, participants will be asked to observe and be aware of their physical sensations, breathing, emotions, thoughts, and environment. Participants will be asked to make these observations without judgment, i.e., to simply notice and focus on their current sensations, thoughts and feelings. An example script of a mindfulness session has been attached. Adherence to the intervention will be measured through the app usage of the participants. An 'alternate allocation' approach will be taken: participants are allocated first to either the Intervention group or Waitlist control group on a reciprocal basis until all 72 patients have been allocated.