Self-administered mindfulness interventions reduce stress in a large, randomized controlled multi-site study

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Sparacio, Alessandro; IJzerman, Hans; Ropovik, Ivan; Giorgini, Filippo; Spiessens, Christoph; Uchino, Bert N.; Landvatter, Joshua; Tacana, Tracey; Diller, Sandra J.; Derrick, Jaye L.; Segundo, Joahana; Pierce, Jace D.; Ross, Robert M.; Francis, Zoë; LaBoucane, Amanda; Ma-Kellams, Christine; Ford, Maire B.; Schmidt, Kathleen; Wong, Celia C.; Higgins, Wendy C.; Stone, Bryant M.; Stanley, Samantha K.; Ribeiro, Gianni; Fuglestad, Paul T.; Jaklin, Valerie; Kübler, Andrea; Ziebell, Philipp; Jewell, Crystal L.; Kovas, Yulia; Allahghadri, Mahnoosh; Fransham, Charlotte; Baranski, Michael F.; Burgess, Hannah; Benz, Annika B. E.; DeSousa, Maysa; Nylin, Catherine E.; Brooks, Janae C.; Goldsmith, Caitlyn M.; Benson, Jessica M.; Griffin, Siobhán M.; Dunne, Stephen; Davis, William E.; Watermeyer, Tam J.; Meese, William B.; Howell, Jennifer L.; Standiford Reyes, Laurel; Strickland, Megan G.; Dickerson, Sally S.; Pescatore, Samantha; Skakoon-Sparling, Shayna; Wunder, Zachary I.; Day, Martin V.; Brenton, Shawna; Linden, Audrey H.; Hawk, Christopher E.; O’Brien, Léan V.; Urgyen, Tenzin; McDonald, Jennifer S.; van der Schans, Kim Lien; Blocker, Heidi; Ng Tseung-Wong, Caroline and Jiga-Boy, Gabriela M.. 2024. Self-administered mindfulness interventions reduce stress in a large, randomized controlled multi-site study. Nature Human Behaviour, ISSN 2397-3374 [Article]

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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-024-01907-7

Abstract or Description

Mindfulness witnessed a substantial popularity surge in the past decade, especially as digitally self-administered interventions became available at relatively low costs. Yet, it is uncertain whether they effectively help reduce stress. In a preregistered (OSF https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/UF4JZ; retrospective registration at ClinicalTrials.gov NCT06308744) multi-site study (nsites = 37, nparticipants = 2,239, 70.4% women, Mage = 22.4, s.d.age = 10.1, all fluent English speakers), we experimentally tested whether four single, standalone mindfulness exercises effectively reduced stress, using Bayesian mixed-effects models. All exercises proved to be more efficacious than the active control. We observed a mean difference of 0.27 (d = −0.56; 95% confidence interval, −0.43 to −0.69) between the control condition (M = 1.95, s.d. = 0.50) and the condition with the largest stress reduction (body scan: M = 1.68, s.d. = 0.46). Our findings suggest that mindfulness may be beneficial for reducing self-reported short-term stress for English speakers from higher-income countries.

Item Type:

Article

Identification Number (DOI):

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-024-01907-7

Additional Information:

The preparation of this work was partly funded by Swansea University Strategic Partnerships Research Scholarships from School of Psychology, Swansea University awarded to G.M.J.-B., PRIMUS/24/SSH/017 and NPO ‘Systemic Risk Institute’ (LX22NPO5101) grants awarded to I.R. and NeuroCog ‘Project MIBODA’ from Université Grenoble Alpes awarded to H.I. R.M.R. was supported by the Australian Research Council (grant no. DP180102384) and the John Templeton Foundation (grant no. 62631). We also thank the SCREEN/MSH-Alpes platform for providing access to Qualtrics. The funders had no role in study conceptualization, design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.

Data Access Statement:

This project was preregistered on OSF on 22 March 2022, before the enrolment of the first participant (registration https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/UF4JZ). On editorial request, we retroactively registered our project as a clinical trial on ClinicalTrials.gov (https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT06308744). Our data are available on the OSF (https://osf.io/6w2zm/) and via the GitHub repository (https://github.com/alessandro992/A-large-multi-site-test-of-self-administered-mindfulness). The data are available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0).

Departments, Centres and Research Units:

Psychology

Dates: