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  • Perspective
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A common factors perspective on mindfulness-based interventions

Nature Reviews Psychology volume 1, pages 605–619 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

Mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) have entered mainstream Western culture in the past four decades. There are now dozens of MBIs with varying degrees of empirical support and a variety of mindfulness-specific psychological mechanisms have been proposed to account for the beneficial effects of MBIs. Although it has long been acknowledged that non-specific or common factors might contribute to MBI efficacy, relatively little empirical work has directly investigated these aspects. In this Perspective, I suggest that situating MBIs within the broader psychotherapy research literature and emphasizing the commonalities of rather than the differences between MBIs and other treatments might help to guide future MBI research. To that end, I summarize the evidence for MBI efficacy and several MBI-specific psychological mechanisms, contextualize MBI findings within the broader psychotherapy literature from a common factors perspective, and propose suggestions for future research based on innovations and challenges occurring within psychotherapy research.

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Acknowledgements

The author is grateful to William T. Hoyt and Richard J. Davidson for comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript. This work was supported by NCCIH grant K23AT010879 and the Hope for Depression Research Foundation ‘Defeating Depression’ Award.

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    Simon B. Goldberg

  2. Center for Healthy Minds, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA

    Simon B. Goldberg

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Goldberg, S.B. A common factors perspective on mindfulness-based interventions. Nat Rev Psychol 1, 605–619 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-022-00090-8

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