Mindfulness for Positive Mental Health

The practice of mindfulness is increasingly being integrated into contemporary clinical psychology. Based in Buddhist philosophy and subsequently integrated into Western health care in the contexts of psychotherapy and stress management, mindfulness meditation is evolving as a systematic clinical intervention. This paper describes of mindfulness meditation predominantly in medical settings, as originally conceived and developed by Kabat-Zinn and colleagues. Given the extensive evidence base for the efficacy of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT), researchers have started to explore the mechanisms underlying their therapeutic effects on psychological outcomes, using methods of mediation analysis. The present paper aims to systematically review mediation studies in the literature on mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs), to identify potential psychological mechanisms underlying MBCT and MBSR’s effects on psychological functioning and wellbeing, and evaluate the strength and consistency of evidence for each mechanism.