RESEARCH & EVIDENCE
Mindfulness has moved from contemplative tradition into serious psychological and clinical research.
Structured mindfulness-based programs have now been studied across anxiety, depression, emotional regulation, compassion and wellbeing. This growing body of evidence has helped mindfulness become an important part of contemporary psychological practice.
A major systematic review by Goyal et al. (2014) examined 47 trials involving 3,515 adults and found improvements in anxiety and depression following mindfulness meditation programs.
In a later clinical trial, Hoge et al. (2023) studied 276 adults with diagnosed anxiety disorders. An eight-week MBSR program met the study's criterion for non-inferiority to escitalopram on clinician-rated anxiety severity.
Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) has developed a particularly strong evidence base in recurrent depression.
An individual-participant meta-analysis by Kuyken et al. (2016) combined nine trials involving 1,258 people and found a lower risk of depressive relapse over 60 weeks for participants receiving MBCT.
Research increasingly suggests that mindfulness can change the way we relate to difficult inner experience.
A 2025 meta-analysis of 110 studies involving 8,105 participants found measurable effects for mindfulness-based emotion-regulation strategies.
Of particular interest to Therapeutic Mindfulness, approaches emphasising acceptance and equanimity showed stronger effects than monitoring alone.
That distinction matters to us: mindfulness is not only about noticing experience, but about how we learn to meet it.
Compassion and loving-kindness practices have developed their own research base.
A meta-analysis by Luberto et al. (2018) examined 26 randomised controlled trials involving 1,714 participants and found improvements in empathy, compassion and prosocial behaviour.
This is particularly relevant to our understanding of the Brahmavihāras as an essential, generative part of mindfulness practice.
Explore the Brahmavihāras in our Foundations →EVIDENCE IN PRACTICE
Research helps us understand which practices appear useful, how different elements of mindfulness may work, and where contemplative traditions have found meaningful expression within contemporary psychology.
It also helps us refine how we teach.
We are interested not only in whether mindfulness produces an effect, but in what kind of practice was used, what qualities were cultivated, and how those practices become useful in lived experience.
Evidence should make a practice more precise, not merely more marketable.
REFERENCE LIBRARY
A small, curated library for readers who would like to go deeper.
Systematic review of 47 trials involving 3,515 adults.
Found improvements in anxiety and depression following mindfulness meditation programs.
Read the sourceIndividual-participant-data meta-analysis of nine trials involving 1,258 participants.
Found a lower risk of depressive relapse over 60 weeks for participants receiving MBCT.
Read the sourceSystematic review and meta-analysis of 26 randomised controlled trials involving 1,714 participants.
Found improvements in empathy, compassion and prosocial behaviour.
Read the sourceSystematic review of 44 meta-analyses covering 336 randomised controlled trials and 30,483 participants.
Found evidence of benefit across a wide range of populations, interventions and outcomes, while identifying important differences between comparisons.
Read the sourceRandomised clinical trial involving 276 adults with diagnosed anxiety disorders.
MBSR met the study's criterion for non-inferiority to escitalopram on clinician-rated anxiety severity.
Read the sourceSystematic review and meta-analysis of 110 studies involving 8,105 participants.
Found measurable effects for mindfulness-based emotion-regulation strategies, with monitoring alone less effective than other strategies.
Read the sourceSPECIFICITY MATTERS
Mindfulness does not lack research, and Therapeutic Mindfulness does not take a sceptical position towards science.
There is a substantial and increasingly sophisticated evidence base for structured mindfulness-based interventions.
Research is most useful, however, when its findings remain specific. A study of MBSR tells us about MBSR. A study of MBCT tells us about MBCT. Results from one program or population cannot automatically be treated as evidence for every practice called mindfulness.
Therapeutic Mindfulness draws on this research, but our own six-week program has not itself been tested in the studies presented here.
Making that distinction is not scepticism about the evidence.
It is part of taking the evidence seriously.
