Meditation Based Therapies—A Systematic Review and Some Critical Observations
Journal Title: Religions - Year 2012, Vol 3, Issue 1
Abstract
This article systematically reviews the evidence for Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) and analyses the conditions around their rising popularity. MBSR, MBCT and Mindfulness Meditation were used as key words. The inclusion criteria were randomized controlled trials using the standard MBSR/MBCT program with a minimum of 33 participants. Twenty four studies were included. MBSR improved mental health in ten studies compared to waitlist control or treatment as usual. Moreover, MBSR was as efficacious as active control group in four studies, and showed a tendency over active control in one study. MBCT reduced the risk of depressive relapse in all five included studies. Evidence supports that MBSR improves mental health and MBCT prevents depressive relapse. It is interesting to observe that meditation based therapy programs are rapidly enjoying popularity. We discuss the cultural and theoretical implications.
Authors and Affiliations
Lone Overby Fjorback and Harald Walach
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP25226
- DOI https://doi.org/10.3390/rel3010001
- Views 381
- Downloads 14
Religion as Play: Pentecostalism as a Theological Type
This article suggests that Pentecostalism constitutes a genuine type of religion we can label as play. In order to identify the particular elements of this type, the article makes use of Erving Goffman’s frame analysis...
Bowing to the Dharma: Japanese Buddhist Women Leaders & Healers
The prodigious stream of Japanese Buddhist women in roles of leadership and healing extends the length of Japanese Buddhist history. This article will highlight the transformative power of bowing that helped galvanize...
The Glorified Body: Corporealities in the Catholic Tradition
The rise of new technologies—robotics, artificial intelligence, and nanotechnology among them—gave the American computer scientist Bill Joy certain pause for deep concern; these, he cautioned, carry the very real poten...
Hostile Natives: Violence in the Histories of American and Japanese Nativism
This article shows how inaccurate the category of nativism—derived from American historiography—is when applied to the Japanese context prevailing when National Learning (Kokugaku) was flourishing. It argues that violenc...
Augustine and Autobiography: Confessions as a Roadmap for Self-Reflection
In this article, I explore a pedagogical strategy for teaching Augustine’s Confessions to undergraduate students, which involves a final essay assignment. In the assignment, students compose their own “confessions” at...