I agree that this finding is not a negative, and that including mindfulness should be a net positive for mental health interventions (especially since it’ll adapt well to a lot of cultural contexts). The reason I included this null-ish result was to indicate that Vipassana-style mindfulness is unlikely to produce measurable ‘enlightenment’ when scaled up as an intervention—otherwise, where is it hiding in these studies? The burden of proof is with mindfulness proponents to find evidence that their method produces the superior effects they claim it does (a) when scaled up and (b) within a time-frame that would make it cost-effective.
(FWIW I think that it probably produces non-inferior effects at scale on comparable timeframes, and for some small number of the population might achieve superiority after some time with the method, but this wouldn’t make it a superior candidate for a global health intervention)
I agree that this finding is not a negative, and that including mindfulness should be a net positive for mental health interventions (especially since it’ll adapt well to a lot of cultural contexts). The reason I included this null-ish result was to indicate that Vipassana-style mindfulness is unlikely to produce measurable ‘enlightenment’ when scaled up as an intervention—otherwise, where is it hiding in these studies? The burden of proof is with mindfulness proponents to find evidence that their method produces the superior effects they claim it does (a) when scaled up and (b) within a time-frame that would make it cost-effective.
(FWIW I think that it probably produces non-inferior effects at scale on comparable timeframes, and for some small number of the population might achieve superiority after some time with the method, but this wouldn’t make it a superior candidate for a global health intervention)