Mindfulness practices found to significantly reduce depression symptoms, especially for those with early-life adversity

A new study reveals that mindfulness practices may significantly reduce depression symptoms, particularly in people who have experienced early-life adversity, such as childhood abuse and neglect.

Led by Eric Loucks, professor of medicine, epidemiology, and of behavioral and social sciences and director of the Mindfulness Center at Brown, the study enrolled 201 participants, 101 of whom were randomized into the Mindfulness-Based Blood Pressure Reduction Program, while 100 were randomized into an enhanced usual care control, which included home blood-pressure monitors, physician access and health-education materials. Researchers also had a measure of participants’ early-life adversity, particularly their exposure to abuse or neglect.

Loucks and his team followed participants for six months to assess changes in blood pressure, health behaviors and mental health, finding that those in the mindfulness program showed significant improvements in their depression symptoms. Additionally, participants who experienced childhood neglect showed greater improvements in depression symptoms than those who had not. A similar, though less pronounced, trend was observed among people with a history of childhood abuse.

“In this program, that was primarily designed to lower blood pressure while addressing whole-person health, we also saw that mental well-being, particularly around depression symptoms, improved in participants that went through the program,” Loucks said. “The findings suggest that cultivating mindful self-regulation skills–such such as self-awareness, attention control and emotion regulation–may help interrupt maladaptive patterns shaped by past experiences.”

Over the last 15 years, Loucks has been studying social determinants of health such as early-life adversity and its impacts on cardiovascular health, body mass index and blood pressure. “I came to a point where I wanted to not just document it, but do something about it, and I wondered if mindfulness training might help,” he said. “I’d gone through a lot of mindfulness training myself outside of work and started to get trained up in mindfulness programs that are specific to health contexts.”

Loucks began to study the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program, running it through two clinical trials that were funded by the NIH and finding that it reduced blood pressure in both trials. He also wanted to look at the intervention from a whole-person perspective.

“If we look at everyday folks out in the world, those that had exposure to early life adversity, like abuse and neglect, tend to have worse mental health and also worse cardiovascular health,” Loucks said. “Mindfulness interventions help by regulating our emotions better when different challenges come up. For someone who has experienced childhood neglect or abuse, mindfulness training can help us make sense of that and respond skillfully to this moment in time.”

Loucks discussed this work during a keynote address at the U.S. DOHaD Society this year. “It felt like a coming-home moment to see that this intervention, originally developed to address psychosocial factors that influence health, had even stronger effects among people with early-life adversity, particularly on depression,” he said. “It’s been about a 15-year arc of research that culminated in these findings.”

Reference:

Sukhbaatar, S., Sun, S., Scarpaci, M. M., Neves, V. V., Sheridan, M. A., & Loucks, E. B. (2026). Mindfulness for heart and mind: Mindfulness-based blood pressure reduction randomized clinical trial for depression symptoms. Health Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1037/hea0001568.