I briefly and informally looked into this several years ago and, at the time, had a few additional concerns. (Can’t promise I’m remembering this perfectly and the research may have progressed since then).
1) Many of the best studies on mindfulness’s effect on depression and anxiety were specifically on populations where people had other medical conditions (especially, I think, chronic pain or chronic illness) in addition to mental illness. But, most people I know who are interested in mindfulness aren’t specifically interested in this population.
My impression is that Jon Kabat-Zinn initially developed Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) for people with other conditions and my intuition from my experience with it is that it might be especially helpful for things like chronic pain. So I had some external validity concerns.
2) There were few studies of long-term effects and it seems pretty plausible the effects would fade over time. This is especially true if we care about intention-to-treat effects. The fixed cost of an MBSR course might only be justified if it can be amortized over a fairly long period. But it wouldn’t be surprising if there are short-to-medium term benefits that fade over time as people stop practicing.
By contrast, getting a prescription for anti-depressants or anti-anxiety has a much lower fixed cost and it’s less costly and easier to take a pill every day (or as needed) than to keep up a meditation practice. (On the other hand, some meds have side effects for many people.)
3) You already mention that “many of those researching it seem to be true believers” but it seems worth reemphasizing this. When I looked over the studies included in a meta-analysis (I think it was the relevant Cochrane Review), I think a significant proportion of them literally had Jon Kabat-Zinn (the founder of MBSR) as a coauthor.
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All that said, my personal subjective experience is that meditating has had a moderate but positive effect on my anxiety and possibly my depression when I’ve managed to keep it up.
On the true believers point, I have also hear second-hand stories from people who went to mindfulness conferences to find that they were full of people who really wanted mindfulness to have a big effect
I briefly and informally looked into this several years ago and, at the time, had a few additional concerns. (Can’t promise I’m remembering this perfectly and the research may have progressed since then).
1) Many of the best studies on mindfulness’s effect on depression and anxiety were specifically on populations where people had other medical conditions (especially, I think, chronic pain or chronic illness) in addition to mental illness. But, most people I know who are interested in mindfulness aren’t specifically interested in this population.
My impression is that Jon Kabat-Zinn initially developed Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) for people with other conditions and my intuition from my experience with it is that it might be especially helpful for things like chronic pain. So I had some external validity concerns.
2) There were few studies of long-term effects and it seems pretty plausible the effects would fade over time. This is especially true if we care about intention-to-treat effects. The fixed cost of an MBSR course might only be justified if it can be amortized over a fairly long period. But it wouldn’t be surprising if there are short-to-medium term benefits that fade over time as people stop practicing.
By contrast, getting a prescription for anti-depressants or anti-anxiety has a much lower fixed cost and it’s less costly and easier to take a pill every day (or as needed) than to keep up a meditation practice. (On the other hand, some meds have side effects for many people.)
3) You already mention that “many of those researching it seem to be true believers” but it seems worth reemphasizing this. When I looked over the studies included in a meta-analysis (I think it was the relevant Cochrane Review), I think a significant proportion of them literally had Jon Kabat-Zinn (the founder of MBSR) as a coauthor.
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All that said, my personal subjective experience is that meditating has had a moderate but positive effect on my anxiety and possibly my depression when I’ve managed to keep it up.
On the true believers point, I have also hear second-hand stories from people who went to mindfulness conferences to find that they were full of people who really wanted mindfulness to have a big effect