Is mindfulness overrated? A major new study suggests so

Eight weeks later, brain scans found no evidence of change in any of the participants’ brains, including the mindfulness group.

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Though it is an important study, the findings were in healthy individuals, not those with anxiety disorders. It was also looking for differences in brain tissue not physical or functional connectivity, explains Dr Nicholas Van Dam, the director for the Contemplative Studies Centre at the University of Melbourne.

“It’s important to note they were just looking at brain changes,” adds Dr Carolyn Ee, a GP and researcher based at Western Sydney University’s National Institute of Complementary Medicine Health Research Institute and Chris O’Brien Lifehouse cancer centre. “They weren’t looking at whether mindfulness improved your mood or improved your anxiety.”

Whether claims about mindfulness are inflated is “an ongoing discussion”, Ee says. “We do know it does contribute to improved mental health but we do have to apply rigorous methods to evaluate it.”

The dose and duration may also make the difference.

“It’s possible that changes at the neural level might become evident later with ongoing regular mindfulness training,” says Ed O’Connor, from the University of South Australia’s school of Allied Health and Human Performance, whose research is exploring how mindfulness might help athletes manage stress.

“We unfortunately do not know exactly what frequency and regularity of mindfulness practice is required to elicit benefits,” says Van Dam. Structured programs like MBSR, which was created in 1979 by American professor emeritus of medicine Jon Kabat-Zinn and which totals about 45 hours over eight weeks, can be effective. But Van Dam’s own work suggests benefits can take hundreds of hours when mindfulness practice is self-guided or not face-to-face.

When we do see effects, they can vary among individuals and are not always positive. Anyone with a mental illness should be evaluated by a clinician before undertaking a mindfulness program, cautions Van Dam. Even among healthy individuals, new research has found that precisely because mindfulness calms negative emotions, it can make us feel less guilty and less likely to apologise when we’ve done something wrong. It suggests, the researchers said, we should be careful about when and how we use mindfulness.

This is because, even though it may be overrated when it comes to structural brain changes, it does have an effect on us. And panacea it is not, but dropping the judgment of our experiences and being more attentive in the here and now can help to relieve anxiety, depression, as well as chronic pain. So, do brain changes really matter?

“The hype around brain change is often used as a marketing tool, but many people are often seeking changes in behaviour such as reductions in stress, better regulation of emotions, or reductions in psychological distress,” Van Dam says.

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Nice as it is to have objective data to validate our experiences, if we feel differently and change our behaviours, evidence of neuroplasticity may become less significant, Ee suggests.

“Do people care about changes in the brain anyway? If something changes in your brain but nothing changes in the way you feel, is it really relevant?”

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