PURPOSE:Loving-kindness meditation has been used for centuries in the Buddhist tradition to develop love and transform anger into compassion. This pilot study tested an 8-week loving-kindness program for chronic low back pain patients.

METHOD:Patients (N = 43) were randomly assigned to the intervention or standard care. Standardized measures assessed patients' pain, anger, and psychological distress.

FINDINGS:Post and follow-up analyses showed significant improvements in pain and psychological distress in the loving-kindness group, but no changes in the usual care group. Multilevel analyses of daily data showed that more loving-kindness practice on a given day was related to lower pain that day and lower anger the next day.

CONCLUSIONS:Preliminary results suggest that the loving-kindness program can be beneficial in reducing pain, anger, and psychological distress in patients with persistent low back pain.

IMPLICATIONS:Clinicians may find loving-kindness meditation helpful in the treatment of patients with persistent pain.

PURPOSE: This study was to develop an aromatherapy hand massage program, and to evaluate the effects of lavender aromatherapy on cognitive function, emotion, and aggressive behavior of elderly with dementia of the Alzheimer's type. METHOD: The Research design was a nonequivalent control group non-synchronized quasiexperimental study. Lavender aromatherapy was administrated to experimental group I for 2 weeks, jojoba oil massage was administrated to experimental group II for 2 weeks, and no treatment was administrated to the control group for 2 weeks. Data was analyzed using the chi(2)-test, ANOVA, repeated measures of ANCOVA and ANCOVA in the SPSS program package. RESULT: 1. Experimental group I did not show significant differences in cognitive function in relation to the experimental group II and control group. 2. Experimental group I showed significant differences in emotion and aggressive behavior in relation to the experimental group II and control group. CONCLUSION: A Lavender aromatherapy hand massage program is effective on emotions and aggressive behavior of elderly with dementia of the Alzheimer's type.