This study looked at adults who had a past major depression but were not depressed at the time. One group had applied for an eight-week mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) course. The analysis included 45 of them, aged 19 to 60. A comparison group of 26 formerly depressed adults was not seeking treatment and got no training.
Everyone did a computer task with sad and happy faces. It tracked how their attention moved toward or away from each kind of face. At the start, the course group's attention leaned toward sad faces and away from happy ones. The comparison group showed neither pattern. Across everyone, people with more depressive symptoms were less able to set sad faces aside.
After the course, the lean toward sad faces was smaller. The turn away from happy faces also shrank, but only by a borderline amount. The authors read this as attention opening up to all emotions. The course group also reported fewer depressive symptoms and more mindfulness. The comparison group did not change on these measures. It did turn away from happy faces more after eight weeks, which the authors found hard to explain.
People were not randomly assigned to the groups. The course group started out more depressed and less mindful, so some of the change may be scores drifting back toward average on their own. There was no follow-up testing and no healthy control group.
The numbers Stats and what the terms mean
The statistics behind the plain-language claims above.
- De Raedt, 2011: difference between groups at the start in attention to sad faces, d = .50.
- De Raedt, 2011: link between depressive symptoms and setting sad faces aside, across the whole sample at the start, r(78) = -.237.
- De Raedt, 2011: drop in the course group's lean toward sad faces after MBCT, d = .34.
- De Raedt, 2011: borderline drop in the course group's turn away from happy faces, P = .09, d = .27.
- De Raedt, 2011: drop in the course group's depressive symptoms (BDI-II), d = .63.
- De Raedt, 2011: rise in the course group's self-rated mindfulness (MAAS), d = .33.
- De Raedt, 2011: rise in the comparison group's turn away from happy faces over 8 weeks with no training, d = .83.
- De Raedt, 2011: how much more depressed the course group was than the comparison group at the start, d = 1.02.
What the terms mean:
- d shows how big a difference is. Roughly, 0.2 is small, 0.5 is moderate and 0.8 is large. A minus sign shows the direction of the change, not its size.
- r shows how closely two measures move together, from -1 to 1. A minus sign means one goes up as the other goes down.
- P is the chance of a result this large if there were no real effect. Values above .05 are usually treated as not firm.
Source: Rudi De Raedt, Saskia Baert, Ineke Demeyer, et al.. Changes in Attentional Processing of Emotional Information Following Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy in People with a History of Depression: Towards an Open Attention for all Emotional Experiences. Cognitive Therapy and Research (2011). doi:10.1007/s10608-011-9411-x