Practice of mindfulness meditation is associated with decreased stress response (e.g. Grossman, Niemann, Schmidt, & Walach, 2004). Brief mindfulness programs show promising results in an online context. In an RCT (Cavanagh et al., 2013), 104 students (age range 19-51 years) were randomly allocated to a wait-list control or to a two-week, self-guided, online, mindfulness-based intervention, which included an invitation to daily mindfulness meditation practice. Immediately following the two-week program, the treatment group showed reduced stress and symptoms of anxiety and depression, with small to medium magnitudes of effect in intention to treat analysis. A strong association was found between improvements in mindfulness and reductions in self-reported stress and anxiety/depression.
- Grossman P, Niemann L, Schmidt S, Walach H. (2004). Mindfulness-based stress reduction and health benefits. A meta-analysis. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 57, 35 – 43.
- Cavanagh, K., Strauss, C., Cicconi, F., Griffiths, N., Wyper, A., & Jones, F. (2013). A randomised controlled trial of a brief online mindfulness-based intervention. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 51(9), 573–578. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2013.06.003