Background: Meditation has become increasingly popular in recent decades. However, relatively little remains known about the prevalence of and risk factors for adverse experiences related to a single meditation practice. Objective: The objective of our study was to examine adverse experiences associated with 3 brief, digitally delivered meditation practices (mindfulness, self-compassion, and...
Despite decades of meditation research, there is a lack of preregistered and well-powered studies that investigate the effects of brief meditation practices on subjective wellbeing and use data-driven approaches to predict response to these interventions. Using representative samples of the US and UK adult populations with regards to age, sex, and ethnicity (N = 5049), we conducted a...
Background: Digital meditation-based interventions (MBIs) reach vast global audiences with millions of active users, yet concerns persist about the frequency and nature of adverse experiences (ie, AExs) occurring during meditation training. Some researchers have argued that AExs are substantially underdetected and reflect iatrogenic harm caused by meditation (ie, adverse effects [AEfs]). Others...
This invited commentary responds to Berryman et al. (2025), "The mindful scientist: How meditation could support ethical scientific practice," and offers an implementation-focused perspective on the role of meditation-based ethical development interventions (MBEDs) within contemporary academic systems. We begin by acknowledging the importance of the ethical challenges facing academia and the...
Objectives: Digital technology opens the possibility of providing meditation instruction in the midst of daily activities. This study explores the use of "active" meditation practices which involve meditating while completing daily activities (e.g., folding laundry). Method: We use data from public users of the Healthy Minds Program (HMP) meditation app (N = 26,532, Sample 1) and from a...
Despite growing popularity, associations between dosage and outcomes in meditation app interventions have not been established. We examined this relationship using a range of operationalizations of dosage (e.g., minutes of use, days of use, number and type of activities completed) and strategies for modeling outcomes (e.g., ordinary least squares regression, multilevel modeling, latent class...
More research is needed to understand the effects of school-based mindfulness programs in the years before adolescence, which represent a critical juncture and transitional period of development. The present study investigated mindfulness with elementary school students using random assignment and objective measures. The sample included 292 5th graders from 21 classrooms randomly assigned to an...
Understanding why interventions work is essential to optimizing them. Although mechanistic theories of meditation-based interventions (MBIs) exist, empirical evidence is limited. We randomly assigned 662 adults (79.9% reported clinical levels of anxiety or depressive symptoms) to a four-week smartphone-based MBI or wait-list control condition early in the COVID-19 pandemic. Psychological...
Meditation apps are the most widely used mental health apps. The precise mechanisms underlying their effects remain unclear. In particular, the degree to which affect experienced during meditation is associated with outcomes has not been established. We used the meditation app arm of a recently completed randomized controlled trial comparing a self-guided meditation app (Healthy Minds Program)...
Bidirectional associations between changes in symptoms and alliance are established for in-person psychotherapy. Alliance may play an important role in promoting engagement and effectiveness within unguided mobile health (mHealth) interventions. Using models disaggregating alliance and psychological distress into within- and between-person components (random intercept cross-lagged panel model),...
OBJECTIVE: they work. Mechanisms of change may be obscured due to prior research collapsing across heterogeneous subgroups of patients with differing underlying mechanisms of response. Studies identifying baseline individual characteristics that predict differential response (i.e., moderation) may inform research on why (i.e., mediation) a particular subgroup has better outcomes to an...
The present study explored prospective links between trait mindfulness and compassion on subsequent coping and compliance with Centers for Disease Control (CDC) guidelines and indirect effects via well-being and internalized distress during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study included N = 736 US college students who participated in a three-wave longitudinal study across a single academic year. The...
Mindfulness-based programmes (MBPs) are widely used to prevent mental ill-health that is becoming the leading global cause of morbidity. Evidence suggests beneficial average effects but wide variability. We aimed to confirm the effect of MBPs on psychological distress, and to understand whether and how baseline distress, gender, age, education, and dispositional mindfulness modify the effect of...
Digital interventions have the potential to alleviate mental health disparities for marginalized and minoritized communities. The current study examined whether disparities in access and utilization of meditation in the United States (US) were reduced for a freely available meditation app. We analyzed demographic and usage data from US-based users of the Healthy Minds Program (HMP; N = 66,482)...
We investigated whether informal meditation practice (i.e., engagement of meditative techniques outside a period of formal meditation) was associated with outcomes in smartphone-based loving-kindness and compassion training. Clinically distressed meditation-naïve participants (n = 351) completed measures of psychological distress, loneliness, empathy, and prosociality at baseline and following...
BACKGROUND: Meditation apps have surged in popularity in recent years, with an increasing number of individuals turning to these apps to cope with stress, including during the COVID-19 pandemic. Meditation apps are the most commonly used mental health apps for depression and anxiety. However, little is known about who is well suited to these apps. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to develop and test...
Significant concerns have been raised about the "mental health crisis" on college campuses, with attention turning to what colleges can do beyond counseling services to address students' mental health and well-being. We examined whether primarily first-year (89.1%) undergraduate students (n=651) who enrolled in the Art and Science of Human Flourishing (ASHF), a novel academic and experiential...
BACKGROUND Meditation apps have surged in popularity in recent years, with an increasing number of individuals turning to these apps to cope with stress, including during the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, meditation apps now represent the most commonly used mental health apps for depression and anxiety. However, little is known regarding who is well-suited to these apps. OBJECTIVE The aim of this...
Studies purporting to show changes in brain structure following the popular, 8-week mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) course are widely referenced despite major methodological limitations. Here, we present findings from a large, combined dataset of two, three-arm randomized controlled trials with active and waitlist (WL) control groups. Meditation-naïve participants ( n = 218) completed...
Meditation apps are popular and may reduce psychological distress, including during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, it is not clear who is most likely to benefit. Using randomized controlled trial data comparing a 4-week meditation app (Healthy Minds Program; HMP) with an assessment-only control in school system employees (n=662), we developed an algorithm predicting who is most likely to...
Objective: This study explores whether variability in the implementation of an undergraduate course on human flourishing is differentially associated with student outcomes. Participants: 101 students in the "Art and Science of Human Flourishing" course across three large, public, R1 universities in Fall 2018 participated in the study. Methods: Formative course data included researcher...
Abstract Studies purporting to show changes in brain structure following the popular, eight-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course are widely referenced despite major methodological limitations. Here, we present findings from a large, combined dataset of two, three-arm randomized controlled trials with active and waitlist (WL) control groups. Meditation-naive participants (n=218)...
The working alliance may be relevant in unguided smartphone-based interventions, but no validated measure exists. We evaluated the psychometric properties of the six-item Digital Working Alliance Inventory (DWAI) using a cross-sectional survey of meditation app users ( n = 290) and the intervention arm of a randomized trial testing a smartphone-based meditation app ( n = 314). Exploratory...
While the extraordinary pressures of the COVID-19 pandemic on student mental health have received considerable attention, less attention has been placed on the well-being of educators. School system employees play a vital role in society, and teacher levels of well-being are associated with the educational outcomes of young people. We extend extant research on the prevalence and correlates of...
Mindfulness-based interventions that span multiple sessions over time appear to confer psychological benefits. However, the effects of brief periods of mindfulness meditation training are less clear, particularly on measures of cognitive functioning. This study assessed whether brief mindfulness practice (breath awareness) or training in two other contemplative practices – loving-kindness and...