Centre for Positive Psychology, Melbourne Graduate School of Education, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia.
Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia.
Stress Health. 2019 Aug;35(3):227-255. doi: 10.1002/smi.2857. Epub 2019 Mar 15.
Mindfulness, meditation, and other practices that form contemplative interventions are increasingly offered in workplaces to support employee mental health. Studies have reported benefits across various populations, yet researchers have expressed concerns that adoption of such interventions has outpaced scientific evidence. We reappraise the extant literature by meta-analytically testing the efficacy of contemplative interventions in reducing psychological distress in employees (meta-analysed set: k = 119; N = 6,044). Complementing other reviews, we also examine a range of moderators and the impact of biases that could artificially inflate effect sizes. Results suggested interventions were generally effective in reducing employee distress, yielding small to moderate effects that were sustained at last follow-up. Effects were moderated by the type of contemplative intervention offered and the type of control group utilized. We also found evidence of publication bias, which is likely inflating estimated effects. Uncontrolled single-sample studies were more affected by bias than were large or randomized controlled trial studies. Adjustments for publication bias lowered overall effects. Overall, our review supports the effectiveness of contemplative interventions in reducing employee distress, but there is a need for proactive strategies to mitigate artificially inflated effect sizes to avoid the misapplication of contemplative interventions in work settings.
正念、冥想和其他形式的冥想干预措施越来越多地在工作场所提供，以支持员工的心理健康。研究报告称，各种人群都从中受益，但研究人员表示担忧，此类干预措施的采用速度超过了科学证据。我们通过元分析测试冥想干预措施在减轻员工心理困扰方面的功效（元分析集：k=119；N=6044），重新评估了现有文献。我们还补充了其他评论，研究了一系列调节因素和可能人为夸大效应大小的偏差的影响。结果表明，干预措施通常能有效减轻员工的困扰，产生小到中等的效果，并且在最后一次随访时仍能持续。效果受到提供的冥想干预措施类型和使用的对照组类型的调节。我们还发现了发表偏倚的证据，这可能夸大了估计的效果。与大型或随机对照试验研究相比，未控制的单样本研究受偏差影响更大。对发表偏倚的调整降低了总体效果。总的来说，我们的综述支持冥想干预措施在减轻员工困扰方面的有效性，但需要采取积极主动的策略来减轻人为夸大的效果，以避免在工作场所错误应用冥想干预措施。
