Effectiveness of Meditation-based Interventions on Health Problems Caused by COVID-19 Pandemic: Narrative Review.

A quantitative review of seven online randomized controlled trials found that meditation-based interventions significantly reduce overall distress (depression, anxiety, stress) by 20.5% to 68.8% and moderately improve insomnia by 5.2% to 38.5%. For long COVID, effectiveness varied widely across 13 symptoms, from 0.0% to 71.2%. The review provides compelling evidence that meditation-based interventions can alleviate these five prevalent disorders arising from the pandemic.

Study at a glance

Abstract

This article provides a quantitative review of the potential applications of meditation-based interventions (MBIs) in addressing the major health issues arising from the COVID-19 pandemic. The review assesses the effectiveness of MBIs on five prevalent disorders during the pandemic, namely depression, anxiety, stress, insomnia, and long COVID. This is achieved by selecting and scrutinizing seven studies that involve various types of online randomized controlled trials and utilize control group outcomes for effectiveness evaluation. The findings reveal a significant impact of MBIs on overall distress disorder, encompassing symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress, with effectiveness ranging from 20.5% to 68.8%. The interventions also show moderate effectiveness on insomnia disorder with improvements between 5.2% and 38.5%. However, the effectiveness on long COVID disorder presents a mixed picture, with improvements varying from 0.0% to 71.2% across 13 related symptoms or qualities examined. This review offers compelling evidence supporting the effectiveness of MBIs in alleviating these five prevalent disorders resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.