Effects of mindfulness and of mindfulness intervention

A growing interest in the human sciences has emerged in the last twenty years with respect to mindfulness. Until recently, there were confusions of the concept of mindfulness with the meditation practices. According to Brown and Ryan (2003), mindfulness is an innate tendency of all individuals, present at different degrees, that demonstrated both conceptual and empirical utility in the last years, in studies on psychological wellbeing, physical health, work and sport performance, and the field of the interpersonal relationships. The object of this article is to present this psychological concept as well as the results of the studies relating to the effects of this attribute on well-being and on emotional and behavioural regulation. In the second part of the article, we present a review of the literature of the principal therapeutic interventions based on mindfulness. Several meta-analyses show moderate to important effect sizes of this type of approach on the symptoms of depression and anxiety (Hofmann et al., 2010). Lastly, we propose orientations for future research on mindfulness and on related interventions. (C) 2012 Societe francaise de psychologie. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.