Mindfulness is a form of meditation that cultivates present moment awareness in a non-judging way. It has a Buddhist origin but has been practiced in the last 40 years without relation to any religious belief. It has been proposed as a treatment for a variety of ailments.

To carry out an overview of systematic reviews of the evidence on mindfulness as a therapeutic tool.

To summarize the existing evidence on the efficacy of mindfulness.

We searched for systematic reviews in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (Cochrane Library).

We found nine Cochrane reviews (for fibromyalgia, aggressiveness in intellectually disabled people, mechanical neck disorders, reducing sedentariness at work, anxiety, somatoform disorders, and post-stroke fatigue), two Cochrane review protocols (stress reduction of patients with breast cancer, and substance use disorders), 50 non-Cochrane reviews (29 provisional abstracts and 21 structured abstracts from the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination) on the efficacy of mindfulness. The Cochrane reviews showed a lack of conclusive evidence for fibromyalgia, aggressiveness in intellectually disabled people, anxiety disorders, somatoform disorders and post-stroke fatigue. Mindfulness training induced a non-significant reduction in workplace sitting time. For chronic neck pain, mindfulness exercises minimally improved function but no global effect was perceived at short term.

According to the existing Cochrane reviews, there is a general lack of evidence mindfulness as an effective treatment. For chronic neck pain, mindfulness exercises minimally improved function. We have detected important areas where high quality clinical trials are needed.

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.