Mindfulness
Why are more mindful people less depressed and anxious?
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
People who were more mindful had fewer symptoms of depression and anxiety, and this link ran largely through worrying and ruminating less.
Study at a glance
- Design
- Cross-sectional — Online questionnaire survey analysed with structural equation modelling of mediation paths, with bootstrapped indirect effects
- N
- N=1151 · 1151 adults without a reported psychiatric diagnosis retained from 1494 respondents; 491 reported practising mindfulness meditation
- Population
- English- and Spanish-speaking adults from many countries (mostly Spain, Canada and the US), mostly women
- Outcome
- Depression and anxiety symptoms (HADS), with worry, rumination, cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression as mediators
Structured fields used in claim comparison tables when every cited study has a complete layer.
Key findings
Mindfulness was linked to fewer depression and anxiety symptoms both directly and indirectly. For depression, all four processes acted as mediators; for anxiety, worry, rumination and reappraisal did but suppression did not. Worry and rumination made the largest contributions to the model, reappraisal and suppression smaller ones. Meditation practice was associated with higher mindfulness but had no direct link to depression or anxiety once mindfulness was accounted for, with Bayes factors favouring no association.
Methodology
The researchers surveyed 1151 adults online who had not been diagnosed with a mental disorder, measuring mindfulness, depression and anxiety symptoms, worry, rumination, and two emotion-regulation habits: reappraising situations and suppressing emotional expression. They also estimated each person's lifetime hours of mindfulness meditation. They then fitted a single structural equation model testing whether the four regulation processes carried the association between mindfulness and symptoms.
Limitations
All data came from a single online survey at one time point, so the 'mediation' paths are a statistical model of correlations; they cannot show that mindfulness causes lower worry or that worry causes symptoms, and the reverse direction is equally consistent with the data. Participants were self-selected volunteers, mostly women, and diagnosis status and meditation hours were self-reported estimates. The model was also adjusted using statistical significance and modification indices, which risks fitting this particular sample.
How this study connects
Role on claims
Each row is a claim on a concept or method page where this paper supports, challenges, or qualifies the statement. Roles are hand-checked — not a model guess.
Not yet placed on a claim. This paper has study layers, but no concept page yet cites it as support, challenge, or qualifier.
Related papers in this topic
Same topic cluster — not a recommendation engine.
- Do women and men get different benefits from meditation training?
- Do different types of meditation train different mental skills?
- Does mindfulness training help college rowers sleep and perform?
- Does meditation training improve young children's attention?
- Does time feel slower to experienced meditators?