Supplementary materials for: The Effects of Clinical Meditation Programs on Stress and Well-Being. An Updated Rapid Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) With Active Comparison Groups

Detailed Appendix with information on search strategies, sensitivity analyses, characteristics and results of individual studies, examples of excluded studies, risk of bias assessment, adverse events, model fit diagnostics, moderator analyses for well-being, results of interrater reliability analyses, results of publication bias analyses and references to R packages used. Additionally File Guide for information on all included files in the ESM.

Supplementary materials for: Seekircher, J., Burgard, T., & Bošnjak, M. (2023). The Effects of Clinical Meditation Programs on Stress and Well-Being. An Updated Rapid Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) With Active Comparison Groups. Zeitschrift für Psychologie, 231(1), 16-29. https://doi.org/10.1027/2151-2604/a000510

Many people suffer from chronic conditions, such as cancer, diabetes, or depression. The use and development of meditation interventions to offer complementary psychological treatment for such patients is increasing, as is criticism of research on this topic. Therefore, the aim of the present rapid review and meta-analysis is to investigate the effects of meditation interventions in randomized controlled trials of clinical populations on perceived stress and well-being. A search was conducted in MEDLINE, Web of Science, PsycInfo, CINAHL, PsycArticles, and PSYNDEX between July 2013 and April 13, 2021. Three-level random effect models were estimated. Based on 316 effect sizes, small effects of meditation interventions were found (stress: g = 0.18; well-being: g = 0.25) largely paralleling findings of a previous meta-analysis. An important limitation is the potentially high risk of bias for individual studies. Overall, meditation interventions appear to be beneficial for complementary treatment of chronic clinical conditions.