Mindfulness has become very popular in recent years and we are seeing a large quantity of research published on mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, mindfulness-based group therapy and mindfulness-based stress reduction.
Mindfulness exercises are popular with the general public because they are easy to learn and quick to do, compared with a long wait for other forms of psychotherapy (e.g. CBT).
The published research covers a huge range of health problems and we have featured blogs on topics including anxiety, depression, substance misuse, psychosis, stress, binging and weight loss and the mental health of breast cancer patients.
Overall it seems that the uptake of mindfulness as an intervention and the popularity of this approach amongst service users and health professionals is some way ahead of the evidence. As is often the case, people are not waiting for high quality reliable studies before they start to practice an intervention which is accessible and (seemingly) safe.
