Mindfulness meditation is a powerful treatment for a wide range of problems.

Mindfulness has been marketed as a fix for everything from stress and depression to weight and productivity. Sorting real effects from hype requires comparing meditation not just to doing nothing, but to active alternatives.

A rigorous meta-analysis (Goyal et al., 2014) of 47 trials found that mindfulness meditation programmes produced small-to-moderate improvements in anxiety, depression, and pain — comparable to what an antidepressant might achieve for mild symptoms — but found little evidence that it beat other active treatments (like exercise or therapy) or that it helped mood, attention, sleep, or weight beyond those active comparisons. So mindfulness has genuine, modest benefits for certain conditions, but the sweeping wellness claims outrun the evidence. Verdict: mixed.