When it comes to reporting data in scientific studies or (even more crucially) interpreting data from scientific studies, we need to pay close attention to how many confounding variables (additional variables that may be affecting the end result) can be present. Is there a control group? Who is the control group made of? Is the intervention fully transparent? How were participants recruited and allocated? Were there any adherence checks? Were all participants included in the randomisation included in the analysis?
Sadly, all this may have led ‘Mindfulness’ to become a hype word with no proper substance. Some people interpret it as this new therapy which is good for everything while others cringe even by hearing the word.
As can be seen by the latest systematic reviews on Mindfulness, it is a huge umbrella term. Tested in complex programmes, it is difficult to fully claim that it is truly mindfulness meditation that creates such positive affects.
In saying so, I’m not contradicting what meditation does, but just making people aware that it is important for future studies to:
- recognise that Mindfulness is an umbrella term. It may also create doubts what each scale/questionnaire is measuring when a researcher is using a particular scale to measure mindfulness.
- test singular aspects of it.
- make sure that methods used in scientific studies are rigorous and following proper guidelines. It is quite baffling to see how certain studies are even published.
Simple Mindfulness meditation breathing exercises seems to be helpful for ATTENTION TRAINING and WORKING MEMORY but not so clear on its overall increased well-being effects. This could imply that the well-being effect may be arising from other aspects of the complex interventions previous studies used. Having said that, attention training is a form of engaging awareness, therefore, it may be the first step needed for one to improve other areas of well-being, which makes it more suitable to be used in combination with other ‘interventions’; for example, acceptance-commitment-therapy.
In my next 2 studies I’m deconstructing Mindfulness and testing singular aspects of it while moving away from such an ambiguous term and combining it with something else. Watch this space.
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