Meditation programs for psychological stress and well-being: systematic review and meta-analysis

Design

• Included: randomized trials of meditation programs in adults through Nov 2012, with controls chosen to address placebo/nonspecific factors where possible
• Corpus: 47 trials, 3,515 participants after screening 18,753 citations
• Outcomes graded across anxiety, depression, stress/distress, mood, mental health–related QoL, attention, substance use, eating, sleep, pain, weight

Pooled signals (mindfulness programs; vs controls)

• Anxiety: moderate evidence; SMD ~0.38 (95% CI 0.12–0.64) at 8 weeks; ~0.22 (0.02–0.43) at 3–6 months
• Depression: moderate evidence; SMD ~0.30 (0.00–0.59) at 8 weeks; ~0.23 (0.05–0.42) at 3–6 months
• Pain: moderate evidence; SMD ~0.33 (0.03–0.62)
• Stress/distress, mental health–related QoL: low-strength evidence patterns in abstract narrative
• Positive mood, attention, substance use, eating, sleep, weight: low or insufficient evidence in authors’ grading

Comparator discipline (critical)

Authors report no evidence that meditation programs were better than specific active treatments (e.g., drugs, exercise, other behavioral therapies)—small-to-moderate gains are framed mainly vs nonspecific or usual-care controls.

How to use in this wiki

Pair with neuroimaging meta-analyses (e.g., default-mode network work) for mechanism context, and with autonomic reviews on mindfulness pages—avoid double-counting the same patient populations across overlapping reviews.