Two styles of meditation eased depressive symptoms in a four-week trial, possibly through different routes

A randomized controlled trial found that two different styles of meditation, one centered on focused attention and one on self-inquiry, reduced depressive symptoms over four weeks compared with a wait-list control group in adults without a depression diagnosis. Exploratory analyses suggested that the two practices may work through partially different psychological processes. The paper was published in Mindfulness.

Meditation has long been studied as a way to ease depression. However, an important question is why meditation works, and whether all forms of meditation work in the same way. Depression is often maintained by rigid negative beliefs about the self, habitual patterns of thinking, and a tendency to interpret experiences as threatening or personally damaging. Meditation may interrupt this cycle through cognitive decentering, which helps people observe thoughts and emotions without immediately treating them as facts or as reflections of who they are.

This shift may also contribute to a broader psychological state sometimes described as selflessness, in which the self is experienced as less rigid, less isolated, and less central to every experience. The idea has roots in Buddhist traditions, which regard attachment to a fixed and independent self as an important source of suffering.

Modern psychology has begun to translate this idea into measurable processes such as connectedness to other people and nature, along with the ability to adopt a more detached perspective on one’s own thoughts and feelings. However, meditation is not a single technique. Different practices may influence these processes in different ways.

Study authors Céline Stinus of the University of Navarra in Spain and Sophie Berjot of the University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne in France conducted a randomized controlled trial comparing the effects of two types of meditation on depressive symptoms and several related psychological characteristics. They expected the self-inquiry practice, which targets rigid beliefs about the self more directly, to produce larger benefits.

Focused-attention meditation involves sustaining attention on a chosen object, such as the breath, noticing when the mind wanders, and repeatedly returning attention to that object. Self-inquiry meditation is a practice in which people examine their thoughts, beliefs, and sense of self by asking questions about where these mental experiences come from and how they shape emotions and behavior. The self-inquiry program used in the study was secular and did not include Buddhist teachings.

The final sample included 147 adults recruited in France through social media, university campuses, and the researchers’ professional networks. People were not eligible if they were taking psychiatric medication, had previously been diagnosed with depression or any other psychiatric condition, or were experienced meditators.

Participants were randomly assigned to focused-attention meditation, self-inquiry meditation, or a wait-list control group, with 49 people in each group in the final analysis. The average age was about 49 in the focused-attention group, 46 in the self-inquiry group, and 44 in the control group, and each group was mostly made up of women.

Participants in the meditation groups were not told which type of meditation they had been assigned to, while those in the control group were told they had been placed on a wait-list. Each meditation program lasted four weeks and included five 60-minute online group sessions, all led by the study’s first author, plus 20 minutes of individual practice a day, five days a week. The two meditation groups attended sessions and practiced at home at similar rates.

Participants completed assessments a week before the programs began and within seven days after they ended. The assessments included measures of depressive symptoms (the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale), dysfunctional attitudes (the Dysfunctional Attitudes Scale), identity threat, or the perception that one’s sense of self is being undermined or devalued (the Threat Appraisal Subscale of the Cognitive Appraisal Scale), cognitive decentering (the Metacognitive Processes of Decentering Trait scale), connectedness to nature (the Connectedness to Nature Scale), and connectedness to humanity (the Connectedness to Humanity scale).

Both meditation programs led to greater reductions in depressive symptoms and identity threat than the wait-list condition, with moderate effect sizes, and both increased cognitive decentering. There were no reliable differences between the two meditation programs on these outcomes. Contrary to the researchers’ expectations, only the focused-attention group showed a reduction in dysfunctional attitudes relative to the wait-list group; the self-inquiry group did not.

The meditation programs did not differ reliably from the wait-list group in their overall effects on connectedness to humanity or nature. However, exploratory analyses found that only the self-inquiry group showed increases in both forms of connectedness from before to after the program.

Exploratory analyses of the processes behind these changes suggested that, in the focused-attention group, increases in cognitive decentering fully accounted for the reduction in depressive symptoms and partly accounted for the reduction in dysfunctional attitudes. In the self-inquiry group, increases in connectedness to humanity partly accounted for reductions in identity threat. Unexpectedly, increases in connectedness to nature in this group were linked to smaller reductions in identity threat, and none of the measured processes explained the self-inquiry group’s reduction in depressive symptoms. Because these analyses were run separately within each group, they do not allow a direct statistical comparison of the two practices’ mechanisms.

“Attentional and deconstructive meditation practices yield comparable benefits for depression-related outcomes but operate through partially distinct mechanisms. Cognitive decentering played a central mechanism in attentional meditation [the focused-attention meditation procedure] while deconstructive practice [the self-inquiry meditation procedure] showed exploratory associations with connectedness [to nature and to humanity], warranting cautious interpretation,” study authors concluded.

The study contributes to the scientific understanding of the mechanisms through which meditation practices might affect depressive symptoms. However, it should be noted that participants in the control group knew they were not receiving treatment, and all outcomes were based on self-reports, which leaves room for expectancy effects and self-report bias. Participants had not been diagnosed with depression or any other psychiatric condition, and their average depression scores were low and within the nonclinical range.

Both meditation programs were delivered by the same instructor, who was also the study’s first author, leaving open the possibility that instructor-related effects influenced the results. In addition, 20 participants dropped out of the wait-list group compared with four or five in each meditation group, the study was not preregistered, and there was no long-term follow-up. Participants were also mostly women who signed up for a meditation study and may have been especially receptive to it.

The paper, “Preventing Depression through Selflessness: Effects and Mechanisms of Attentional vs. Deconstructive Meditation in a Three–Arm Randomized Controlled Trial,” was authored by Céline Stinus and Sophie Berjot.