Effects of a Self-Guided Online Mindfulness and Self-Compassion Program (Mind-OP) in Reducing Negative Automatic Thoughts About Self: Randomized Active Controlled Trial

Negative automatic thoughts about self (NATS) are a central feature of depression, and have been linked cross-sectionally and prospectively with its symptoms. This suggests negative self-referent thoughts are both a by-product and accelerant of depression. Accordingly, reducing NATS is worthwhile given its downstream effects on depression. Very few trials have examined the efficacy of mindfulness-based interventions in remediating this important outcome. Even fewer still have examined the efficacy of low-intensity, online, and scalable interventions in reductions of NATS. We conducted a large randomized controlled trial examining the efficacy of a brief (4-week), self-guided, online mindfulness and self-compassion intervention (Mind-OP) in reducing the frequency and severity of NATS.

We recruited general population participants using a popular crowdsourcing website (CloudResearch) and randomized them to the Mind-OP intervention condition (n = 221) or the Active Control condition (n = 221), and examined pre- to post-change in their NATS on the Cognitive Triad Inventory – Self Subscale.

Results suggest brief, self-guided mindfulness-focused interventions demonstrate promising effects in reducing NATS, which has important implications given their downstream consequences.

The hypotheses of the current study were not preregistered. The trial on whose data the current study builds was preregistered on AsPredicted (#18806) on 2019–01-22.