Meditation training and non-native language training both reduce older adults loneliness in the age-well randomized controlled trial
Publication date
2025-09-29
Document type
Forschungsartikel
Author
Hähnel, Flora
Lutz, Antoine
Chetelat, Gaël
Gonneaud, Julie
Kanske, Philipp
Klimecki, Olga
Organisational unit
Publisher
Springer Nature
Series or journal
Scientific Reports
ISSN
Periodical volume
15
Article ID
33332
Peer-reviewed
✅
Part of the university bibliography
✅
Funding(s)
Language
English
Abstract
Loneliness is a key predictor for mortality and a risk factor for dementia. Meditation training appears to be a promising intervention for loneliness in older adults, but long-term randomized controlled trials with an active control group are scarce. To fill this gap, this secondary analysis of the three-armed clinical randomized controlled Age-Well trial compares the impact of an 18-month meditation training to an 18-month non-native language training, and a passive control group on self-reports of loneliness and post-training reactions to experimentally induced social exclusion in 137 cognitively unimpaired community-dwelling older adults (age ≥ 65 years). Multilevel models revealed that both interventions reduced loneliness from pre- to post-intervention compared to the no-intervention group. No group differences were observed regarding self-reported emotional reactions to social exclusion. Taken together, our results suggest that sharing regular activities with the same group of persons for a long period reduces older adults’ loneliness.
Description
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
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