How do mindfulness-based cognitive therapy and mindfulness-based stress reduction improve mental health and wellbeing? A systematic review and meta-analysis of mediation studies.

By Jenny Gu, C. Strauss, R. Bond, Kate Cavanagh. Clinical Psychology Review, 2015

1,639 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Given the extensive evidence base for the efficacy of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT), researchers have started to explore the mechanisms underlying their therapeutic effects on psychological outcomes, using methods of mediation analysis. No known studies have systematically reviewed and statistically integrated mediation studies in this field. The present study aimed to systematically review mediation studies in the literature on mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs), to identify potential psychological mechanisms underlying MBCT and MBSR's effects on psychological functioning and wellbeing, and evaluate the strength and consistency of evidence for each mechanism. For the identified mechanisms with sufficient evidence, quantitative synthesis using two-stage meta-analytic structural equation modelling (TSSEM) was used to examine whether these mechanisms mediate the impact of MBIs on clinical outcomes. This review identified strong, consistent evidence for cognitive and emotional reactivity, moderate and consistent evidence for mindfulness, rumination, and worry, and preliminary but insufficient evidence for self-compassion and psychological flexibility as mechanisms underlying MBIs. TSSEM demonstrated evidence for mindfulness, rumination and worry as significant mediators of the effects of MBIs on mental health outcomes. Most reviewed mediation studies have several key methodological shortcomings which preclude robust conclusions regarding mediation. However, they provide important groundwork on which future studies could build.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/48f5aee3b206372f2f4a5ae5c315e124e8941975

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Clinical Psychology

In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

Citations in the corpus

What defines mindfulness-based programs? The warp and the weft (2016, neutral): “This emerging model is being clarified and developed as empirical understanding is built (Brewer et al. 2013; Chiesa et al. 2013; Gu et al. 2015; Van der Velden et al. 2015).”
Effectiveness of Self-Compassion Related Therapies: a Systematic Review and Meta-analysis (2018, positive): “As such, the second edition of the MBCT manual (Segal et al. 2013) explicitly makes the promotion of self-compassion an aim of therapy and improvement in self-compassion as a mechanism of change in mindfulness therapies (for a review, see Gu et al. 2015).”
Assessment of mindfulness by self-report. (2018, background): “Meta-analyses have concluded that scores on mindfulness questionnaires increase in response to mindfulness training [24,25,26] and that therapeutic effects of MBIs appear to be mediated by increases in self-reported mindfulness skills [27].”
Mindfulness-based stress reduction and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for psychological health and well-being in nonclinical samples: A systematic review and meta-analysis. (2020, positive): “Increased levels of mindfulness have consistently been shown as a key mechanism of action for MBPs (see Alsubaie et al., 2017; Gu et al., 2015; van der Velden et al., 2015); and it might be that the cognitive components in MBCT enabled participants to embed their mindfulness learning more…”
Effects of Length of Mindfulness Practice on Mindfulness, Depression, Anxiety, and Stress: a Randomized Controlled Experiment (2020, background): “This coincides with previous research identifying trait mindfulness as an underlying mechanism of MBPs for psychological wellbeing (Gu et al. 2015).”