Spurious prospective effects of mindfulness on anxiety and depressive symptoms: Reanalysis of a meta-analytic cross-lagged panel analysis
Kimmo Sorjonen, Bo Melin
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Reanalysis of meta-analytic data |
|---|---|
| Topics | Anxiety Meditation |
| Key points | Argues that previously reported prospective effects of the mindfulness facets acting with awareness and non-reacting on later anxiety and depressive symptoms are spurious, because adjusted cross-lagged effects can arise from correlations with residuals and regression to the mean. Fitting competing models to the same meta-analytic data, the authors report no genuine prospective effects and caution against overinterpreting such adjusted estimates. |
Abstract
A recent meta-analysis claimed decreasing prospective effects of acting with awareness and non-reacting, two facets of dispositional mindfulness, on subsequent anxiety and depressive symptoms. However, the meta-analytic cross-lagged effects were estimated while adjusting for a prior measurement of the outcome variable and it is known that such adjusted cross-lagged effects may be spurious due to correlations with residuals and regression to the mean. We fitted competing models on the same meta-analytic data and found prospective effects of the mindfulness facets on anxiety and depressive symptoms to be spurious. It is important for researchers to be aware of limitations of adjusted cross-lagged effects, meta-analytically estimated or not, in order not to overinterpret findings.
Comparable studies
Other systematic reviews and meta-analyses on anxiety, most cited first.