Mindfulness, Coping, and the Regulation of Stress Under Anxiety: A Scoping Review of Mechanisms and Boundary Conditions

Abstract

Mindfulness-based programs are implemented at scale in schools, workplaces, and clinics on the assertion that they help people handle stress and function under pressure, yet how mindfulness functions in the stress process remains challenged. This scoping review (Arksey & O’Malley framework; PRISMA-ScR reporting) maps a decade of evidence (2016–2026) on how mindfulness functions as a handling resource under stress and anxiety, organizing the literature around coping and emotion regulation as the proposed mechanism rather than treating cognition as a standalone outcome. Four patterns recur. First, mindfulness is reliably associated with a shift toward antecedent-focused, low-cost coping—reappraisal and acceptance—and away from rumination, avoidance, and suppression. Second, this regulatory shift, rather than any direct boost of cognitive machinery, best accounts for the downstream benefits remarked, including a modest, accuracy-specific shield of cognition underload. Third, effects are strongly moderated by trait anxiety, stress or chronicity, task demand, and age, and are largest where affective interference is greatest. Fourth, effects are often small, fragile, and poorly sustained. We argue that coping and emotion regulation are most helpfully treated as the mediating pathway between mindfulness and stress-related upshots, and outline a research agenda centered on mediation, component specificity, boundary conditions, and durability.