Elsevier

Clinical Psychology Review

Volume 31, Issue 6, August 2011, Pages 1041-1056
Clinical Psychology Review

Effects of mindfulness on psychological health: A review of empirical studies

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2011.04.006Get rights and content

Abstract

Within the past few decades, there has been a surge of interest in the investigation of mindfulness as a psychological construct and as a form of clinical intervention. This article reviews the empirical literature on the effects of mindfulness on psychological health. We begin with a discussion of the construct of mindfulness, differences between Buddhist and Western psychological conceptualizations of mindfulness, and how mindfulness has been integrated into Western medicine and psychology, before reviewing three areas of empirical research: cross-sectional, correlational research on the associations between mindfulness and various indicators of psychological health; intervention research on the effects of mindfulness-oriented interventions on psychological health; and laboratory-based, experimental research on the immediate effects of mindfulness inductions on emotional and behavioral functioning. We conclude that mindfulness brings about various positive psychological effects, including increased subjective well-being, reduced psychological symptoms and emotional reactivity, and improved behavioral regulation. The review ends with a discussion on mechanisms of change of mindfulness interventions and suggested directions for future research.

Research highlights

► Mindfulness refers to attending to experience on purpose and non-judgmentally. ► Trait mindfulness and meditation practice correlate with psychological well-being. ► Mindfulness intervention programs reduce psychological symptoms and distress. ► Mindfulness instructions reduce emotional reactivity in laboratory studies. ► Mechanisms of mindfulness' effects need to be a focus of future studies.

Section snippets

Relationship between trait mindfulness and psychological health

Many studies of mindfulness to date have reported on correlations between self-reported mindfulness and psychological health. Such correlations have been reported for samples of undergraduate students (e.g., Baer et al., 2006, Brown and Ryan, 2003), community adults (e.g., Brown and Ryan, 2003, Chadwick et al., 2008) and clinical populations (e.g., Baer et al., 2004, Chadwick et al., 2008, Walach et al., 2006). Before going over these findings, it may be helpful to review questionnaires that

Controlled studies of mindfulness-oriented interventions

Several mindfulness-oriented interventions have been developed and received much research attention within the past two decades, including MBSR, MBCT, DBT and ACT. Some research on these interventions has been uncontrolled and some has focused primarily on physical health outcomes. In this section, we limit our review to published, peer-reviewed randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that assessed psychological health outcomes in adult populations. Some other promising interventions have also

Laboratory research on immediate effects of mindfulness interventions

In addition to correlational and clinical intervention research on mindfulness, a third line of empirical research has examined the immediate effects of brief mindfulness interventions in controlled laboratory settings on a variety of emotion-related processes, including recovery from dysphoric mood, emotional reactivity to aversive or emotionally provocative stimuli, and willingness to return to or persist on an unpleasant task. Such laboratory studies have the advantage of more easily

Mechanisms of effects of mindfulness interventions

The studies reviewed so far indicate that measures of mindful awareness are related to various indices of psychological health and that mindfulness interventions have a positive impact on psychological health. The next natural question, then, is how this impact comes about. Several psychological processes, some of which may overlap, have been proposed as potential mediators of the beneficial effects of mindfulness interventions, including increases in mindful awareness, reperceiving (also known

Understanding and quantification of mindfulness

Because mindfulness is a construct that originates in Buddhism, and has only a brief history in Western psychological science, it is unsurprising that there is considerable challenge in defining, operationalizing, and quantifying it (Grossman, 2008). Although a number of self-report inventories have been developed to assess mindfulness, they vary greatly in content and factor structure, reflecting a lack of agreement on the meaning and nature of mindfulness (Brown, Ryan, & Creswell, 2007).

Conclusion

Based on an examination of empirical literature across multiple methodologies, this review concludes that mindfulness and its cultivation facilitates adaptive psychological functioning. Despite existing methodological limitations within each body of literature, there is a clear convergence of findings from correlational studies, clinical intervention studies, and laboratory-based, experimental studies of mindfulness—all of which suggest that mindfulness is positively associated with

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  • Cited by (0)

    We gratefully acknowledge M. Zachary Rosenthal, Mark Leary, Jeffrey Brantley, and Kathleen Sikkema for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this manuscript.

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