Introduction
psychiatric
DISORDER
Frequently, people engage in activities on autopilot [Practicing mindfulness could improve well-being and alleviate common mental health symptoms via diverse pathways. Mindfulness theories posit that persistently exercising present-moment awareness, acceptance, and related skills reduces suboptimal stress reactivity [Further, the ongoing practice of mindfulness relates closely to higher-order cognitive processes. As being mindful makes one more cognizant and receptive of all elements in the experiential field, mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) are theorized to enhance attention and executive functioning (EF; e.g., One way to advance clinical science is to test the efficacy of mindfulness ecological momentary interventions (MEMIs) on EF and symptoms in psychiatric samples. MEMIs can repeatedly instruct patients to inhibit judgment and other unhelpful impulses or habits and harness EF to deploy mindfulness strategies in To fine-tune MEMIs, a fruitful endeavor may be to investigate their potential to produce therapeutic benefits across Despite the potential advantages of brief MEMIs, only five RCTs have examined their impact. First, a 10-day MEMI that instructed mindfulness exercises three times per day enhanced daily mindfulness, sleep length, and quality in a convenience sample of stressed workers [These prior MEMI RCTs also have three other shortcomings. First, none recruited persons with any mental health disorder clinical symptoms. Thus, there is a need for more studies to determine if such results can be extrapolated to clinical samples. Second, the studies testing popular apps, instructed mindfulness practices for only one, 10- or 20-min/day. It is, therefore, unclear if findings would be replicated or improved upon in a MEMI that prompted clinically distressed participants Accordingly, this study tested the efficacy of a 14-day MEMI package compared with a self-monitoring placebo (SMP) for persons with GAD. Maintenance of gains was assessed at a 1-month follow-up (1MFU). We hypothesized that MEMI (versus SMP) would significantly reduce GAD severity and perseverative cognitions and raise trait mindfulness and EF. Further, we expected maintenance of gains during a 1MFU on these outcome measures.