A qualitativ e study of mindfulness-based
cognitive therapy for depression

Oliv er Mason*
School of Psychology, University of Birmingham, UK

Isabel Hargre aves
School of Psychology, University of Wales, Bangor, UK

Psychotherapeutic interventions containing training in mindfulness meditation have
been shown to help participants with a variety of somatic and psychological conditions.
Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) is a meditation-based psychotherapeutic
intervention designed to help reduce the risk of relapse of recurrent depression. There is
encouraging early evidence from multi-centre randomized controlled trials. However,
little is known of the process by which MBCT may bring therapeutic beneéts. This
study set out to explore participants’ accounts of MBCT in the mental-health context.
Seven participants were interviewed in two phases. Interview data from four participants
were obtained in the weeks following MBCT. Grounded theory techniques were used to
identify several categories that combine to describe the ways in which mental-health
diféculties arose as well as their experiences of MBCT. Three further participants who
have continued to practise MBCT were interviewed so as to further validate, elucidate
and extend these categories. The theory suggested that the preconceptions and
expectations of therapy are important inèuences on later experiences of MBCT.
Important areas of therapeutic change (‘coming to terms’) were identiéed, including
the development of mindfulness skills, an attitude of acceptance and ‘living in the
moment’. The development of mindfulness skills was seen to hold a key role in the
development of change. Generalization of these skills to everyday life was seen as
important, and several ways in which this happened, including the use of breathing
spaces, were discussed. The study emphasized the role of continued skills practice for
participants’ therapeutic gains. In addition, several of the concepts and categories
offered support to cognitive accounts of mood disorder and the role of MBCT in
reducing relapse.

The use of meditation and yoga to train the voluntary deployment of attention or
‘mindful awareness’ (or simply ‘mindfulness’) in physical- and mental-health settings
grew signiécantly during the 1990s. The stress reduction and relaxation programme of
the University of Massachusetts Medical Centre (Kabat-Zinn, 1990) is one of the most
widely used in hospitals and community health settings. There is encouraging evidence
for the programme’s efécacy in the treatment of anxiety and panic disorders (Kabvat-Zinn
et al., 1992), psoriasis (Kabat-Zinn et al., 1998), ébromyalgia (Kaplan, Goldenberg, &
Galvin-Nadeau, 1993), and chronic pain (Kabat-Zinn, Lipworth, Burney, & Sellers,

197British Journal of Medical Psychology (2001), 74, 197–212 Printed in Great Britain
q 2001 The British Psychological Society

*Requests for reprints should be addressed to Oliver Mason, School of Psychology, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston,
Birmingham B15 2TT, UK.

1987). Interestingly, these results have been obtained in groups of mixed diagnoses with
a training that is not tailored to any particular disorder. The goal of the programme is to
increase participants’ awareness of their moment-to-moment experience in the present.
They practise both during teaching sessions and at home to bring their attention back to
the present using their body (the ‘body scan’) or breath as an ‘anchor’. Subsequently, yoga
exercises and ‘breathing spaces’ are used to teach the participants to be in a mindful state
more often, particularly in stressful situations. Teasdale, Segal, and Williams (1995) have
described the essence of this state as ‘to be fully in the present moment, without judging
or evaluating it, without reèecting backwards on past memories, without looking
forward to anticipate the future . . . and without attempting to ‘problem-solve’ or
otherwise avoid any unpleasant aspects of the present situation’.

Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) combines mindfulness techniques from
Kabat-Zinn’s programme with aspects of cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) for
depression in a comprehensive treatment package (see Teasdale et al., 1995). MBCT is
a group-based skills training approach rather than an individual psychotherapy, and its
intention is to train recovered participants in skills that confer some degree of protection
against subsequent depression. Although MBCT aims speciécally to reduce depression, it
retains Kabat-Zinn’s very general approach to skills training and many of the exercises
developed on this programme. In some ways, MBCT has similar aims to CBT in treating
depression. It attempts to teach a greater awareness of thoughts and feelings, and to view
them as mental events rather than as necessarily truthful reèections of reality. It examines
the role that thoughts have in triggering mood and aims to help participants understand
the ways in which escalating depressive thinking patterns and worry promote depression.
It also explicitly focuses on the identiécation of ‘warning signs’ of impending depression.
However, unlike CBT, MBCT does not explicitly suggest changing thought content or
set out to identify schema related to depression. Indeed, the participant may learn
mindfulness skills in the absence of current depressive thinking: the skills taught utilize
an awareness of thoughts and feelings, whether depressive or not.

One randomized multi-centre trial of MBCT’s effectiveness in reducing relapse for
depression (Teasdale et al., 2000) has found signiécant effects when compared to
treatment-as-usual. Risk of relapse decreased by 44% in patients with three or more
previous episodes of depression, bud did not signiécantly reduce relapse in patients with
only two previous episodes of depression. Some evidence that MBCT’s effects are partly
cognitively mediated comes from a study of autobiographical memory (Williams,
Teasdale, Segal, & Soulsby, 2000). Williams et al. found that MBCT reduced recovered
depressed patients’ general memory, suggesting that the encoding and retrieval of
personal events can be altered by this intervention.

Teasdale and colleagues (Teasdale, 1999; Teasdale et al., 1995) have suggested that the
mechanisms by which MBCT may work can be explained within a theoretical cognitive
framework called Interacting Cognitive Subsystems (ICS; Teasdale & Barnard, 1993).
Central to this framework is the assumption that knowledge and experience are contained
in qualitatively different forms. In particular, speciéc or propositional meanings are
differentiated from generic, richly elaborated models. Only the latter are hypothesized to
act as triggers for emotional states. For individuals prone to depression, such schematic
models contain global negative beliefs about the self and other depression-related thoughts
and feelings. When these are triggered, a self-perpetuating processing conéguration

Oliver Mason and Isabel Hargreaves198

(‘depressive interlock’) may result in which feedback from one’s body state (a sensory loop),
and from negative thinking (a cognitive loop) maintains depressed affect. The model
suggests that two important ways of reducing the potential for depressive interlock are
breaking negative feedback from the body, and interrupting ruminative cycles. In
addition, Teasdale (1999) has made a subtle distinction, on the basis of the model,
between metacognitive knowledge (knowing that thoughts are not always accurate) and
metacognitive insight (experiencing thoughts as events in the éeld of awareness). He
suggests that mindfulness meditation practice facilitates metacognitive insight in which
thoughts are experienced as events, so changing one’s relationship with inner experience.
We were interested in the present study as to whether this model would be borne out.

The present study attempted to explore the therapeutic process involved in MBCT as
described by participants themselves. The qualitative technique of grounded theory
(Corbin & Strauss, 1990) was chosen because this is an approach particularly suited to
capturing individual differences and commonalities in participants’ experiences of the
process of therapy. This method places emphasis on rendering a theory grounded in the
particularities of participants’ experience; but which is able to elucidate common themes
and ‘stages’ in their progress during and after the programme. Importantly, the focus of
qualitative studies of CBT (e.g. Borrill & Iljon Foreman, 1996), including the present
one, is on the process rather than the outcome of therapeutic intervention. Qualitative
methods are particularly well suited to evaluations of cognitive interventions because
changes to individual cognitions are hypothesized to be the key to clinical change. In our
opinion and others (Williams & Moorey, 1989), evaluating and developing therapy
should involve both quantitative and qualitative approaches to show both that it can
work (using case studies and clinical trials), and how it works for participants adhering to
the treatment. One review of studies of CBT for depression (Whisman, 1993) suggested
that intra-subject variability in response to treatment remained a relatively untapped
source of information about how therapy works. In-depth qualitative methods are ideal
for examining this variability.

Method

Interviews
Four participants were interviewed by the main author, a clinical psychologist, in the érst phase. The
interviewer had previous experience of meditation and MBCT but was not the course trainer—instead he
(O.M.) had participated in the course with several of the participants. In this way the interviewer was known
by the participants in the context of the group—a feature which considerably aided the process. The
interviews were left very open as to their structure and content to enable participants’stories, experiences and
concerns to emerge without censorship or leading questions. However, the interviewer prompted the
participants to comment on the utility or otherwise of any aspects of the course that were touched upon by
the participants.

Following grounded theory analysis, its products and the questions it prompted were used to guide three
further interviews with participants who had completed MBCT between 12 and 30 months previously, and
who attended a monthly MBCT practice group. Although a very open style was retained, each of these
participants was explicitly asked to reèect on experiences relevant to the categories derived from the earlier
interviews. In this way, richer descriptions and opportunities for diversity as well as similarity of experiences
was promoted. These participants were recruited from a group that continued to meet on a monthly basis to
meditate and to share their experiences.

199Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy

Participants
All participants were recruited to MBCT through the adult mental-health service, and had experienced
depression on at least two occasions as judged by members of the service. It is not possible to say what formal
diagnosis would have been given in all cases, although the majority conformed to DSM-III-R criteria on at
least two occasions. The sample is explicitly not random, as is the case with much qualitative research.
Instead, it is formed of individuals willing to contribute, the majority of whom have experienced beneéts
from MBCT.

Initial participants. Pam (38), formerly a teacher, described a 3-year history of what she termed ‘M.E.’. She has
received informal counselling from a medical specialist interested in M.E. prior to referral to AMH services.
Jane (44), a health-service worker, reported a long history of bladder-related health problems that led to an
operation to remove her bladder 16 months previously. About 1 year previously, she received a diagnosis of
major depression which has since recurred. Lucy (34), an oféce worker, was diagnosed with major depression
between 12 and 18 months ago. Her depression followed an acrimonious divorce about a year previously and
has varied in intensity during this period. Mary (24), a student teacher, was diagnosed with M.E. between 12
and 18 months ago. She has not received any formal psychotherapy, but has suffered several episodes of
depression leading to referral to AMH services.

Further participants. Carys (59) was diagnosed with breast cancer about 6 years previously. Her cancer was
treated and remitted 2 years later. However, her sister has since died from the disorder. She was diagnosed
with major depression on two occasions about 4 and 2 years previously. She received both medication and
psychotherapy from local mental-health services on both occasions. Mark (54) was érst diagnosed with
depression over 8 years previously and has received treatment (behavioural and transactional analytic therapy)
during at least three subsequent episodes associated with both divorce and the death of his mother. Robert
(49) was érst diagnosed with depression 10 years previously as well as subsequent episodes of depression,
some of which did not receive diagnosis or treatment.

A nalysis
Grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) uses a systematic set of procedures to develop an inductively
derived analysis or theory about a phenomenon of interest. Verbatim accounts (transcribed from tape
recordings) of the interviews were coded by isolating observations, sentences or incidents in an attempt to
name and categorize concepts. By making comparisons between codes and by questioning both our and
participants’ assumptions, we formed categories from the grouping of codes that seem to pertain to the same
phenomena. Both authors acknowledge broadly cognitive orientations towards therapy and attempted to
question this inèuence on the analytic process. During this process we attempted to be guided by the codes
and their interrelationships so as to select a core category that could help guide us in a data-driven way
towards a well-étting ‘story’ of the participants’ experiences. We made extensive use of in vivo codes (Strauss,
1987, p. 33; placed in single quotation), drawn from the accounts themselves, to name categories and
subcategories in ways that attempted to summarize participants’ own meanings in their own words.

We note that it is also important that sufécient basic evidence is supplied for the reader to judge the
trustworthiness of a grounded theory (Henwood & Pidgeon, 1993), and so we have quoted in depth from
participants’ own accounts. By completing the interviews in two stages, it was hoped that this would both
provide credibility checks, as well as aid elucidation of progress subsequent to MBCT. A further credibility
check was afforded by collection of ‘talk aloud’ protocols during meditation (Mason, 1999).

Results

Strauss and Corbin (1990) strongly suggest that the grounded theorist attempts to
conceptualize the central phenomenon as a core category which encompasses the
participants’ story-lines. The concepts and codes developed during open coding suggested
several core categories and it was only after some reèection that we felt the primary

Oliver Mason and Isabel Hargreaves200

phenomenon became apparent. The core category might be encapsulated by the following
statement. ‘‘The main story concerns the way participants develop understandings of
their mental and physical ‘selves’ over time, and the role that mindfulness practice has in
helping them manage their diféculties better’’. We felt that this core category reèected
the concerns of participants themselves and served to place the course in the context of
their lives. From analysis of the interviews, eight categories were formed with several
subcategories (Table 1). Participants’ own words are used where possible to illustrate the
codes used to form categories.

Preconditions
This category referred to aspects of self that participants related to the development of
later diféculties. Jane’s history of unexplained illness led her to state that ‘many years of
medical negative thinking, many years of being told you’re not as bad as you think you
are’ had taken its toll on her view of herself. Both Jane and Mary referred to coping by
‘total denial’ (Jane) as well as ‘ignoring or choosing to ignore’ diféculties (Mary). Pam and
Mary were later to suffer the symptoms of M.E. and both described very active coping
styles. Mary spoke of a long history of illnesses prior to the onset of M.E. following which
‘I expected that I could go back in my usual bull-in-a-china-shop sort of way’. Subsequent
to the course, she made links between this coping style and her illness (see A ccepting
attitude below).

Participants made comments about characteristic ways of thinking and feeling prior to
psychological diféculties that covered a wide spectrum. Mary came to realize that she
‘didn’t pay attention to actually what I was feeling . . . inside feelings’, and that, following
a road traféc accident, ‘I laughed about it when actually I was really seething and very
very angry, but I ignored that totally’. Talking of his own thoughts Mark stated, ‘I was
deénitely in a world of my own making, certainly I was living inside my own head’. Later
he was to address his habit of identifying with his own thoughts through mindfulness
training.

201Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy

Table 1. Categories and subcategories

Categories Subcategories

Preconditions
Change to health and well-being Breaking point/cry for help
Distress and depression Difécult thoughts
Context of course
Course expectations
Initial negative experiences
‘Coming to terms’ Group support/identiécation

Relaxation
Discovery/‘surprise’
Skills
Accepting attitude

‘Warning bells’
‘Bringing it into everyday’

Change to health and well-being
This category refers to an event or set of events that the participants perceived as causal to
subsequent psychological distress. Jane referred to reaching ‘breaking point’, and Pam to
a point of capitulation following refusal of social security, at which she énally accepted ‘I
needed help, HELP! I have gone all the way through this’. For others this process was
more gradual: Mary described her descent into what she termed ‘M.E.’ following
glandular fever thus: ‘things were getting worse physically, I was losing energy and
that was affecting my ability to think clearly . . . I didn’t know my capabilities’.
Congruent with her coping style of denial, Jane ‘didn’t take it [sister’s death] on board
for quite a few months’, leading to subsequent depression. Both Mark and Robert referred
to a ‘mid-life crisis’ that for Robert was a ‘cataclysmic event’ that came ‘out of the blue’.

Distress and depression
This category refers to one or more periods of signiécant and long-lasting psychological
distress including low and anxious mood. For many, depression formed a salient aspect
but was not the only label that participants used. A particular feature was problematic
thinking or ‘thought overload’ (Mark): the unpredictability of her M.E. symptoms led
Mary to describe getting ‘very very anxious about [social situations] . . . and I would think
about that all the time’. Pam also referred to thoughts ‘going round and round in your
head’ and ‘you really notice what is happening in your thoughts, you know I am fed up of
thinking’. Jane had also noticed the role thoughts played in her depression and stated that
‘the érst thought that pops into your head as you érst open your eyes makes an awful lot
of difference to the rest of the day’. In contrast, Mark described how he ‘found that
mundane things got much harder to do, and I found myself getting caught in a trance-
like state. It might be doing something like washing the dishes or [pause] and énding
myself switched off in a mindless state’.

Context of course
This category refers to the ways in which the MBCT course was situated with respect to
other therapies. For some it was part of ‘alternative therapies of the . . . mind over matter
type’ (Pam). For others, it formed part of what mental-health services offered, so was
considered by them as a form of group psychotherapy.

Participants’ assumptions about therapy interacted with their causal beliefs about their
illnesses. For instance, Pam originally held érmly biologically based attributions for her
illness that her experience of MBCT led her to reconsider. However, she retained the view,
contrary to that taught by the course, that the approach of ‘alternative therapies’
(including MBCT) is based on ‘positive thinking’. Interestingly, this has not prevented
her using many CBT-type strategies and developing a non-judging and accepting
attitude of ‘acknowledging [thoughts] and not being bothered by them’.

Expectations of course
Participants’ comments about their expectations could be described as forming a
continuum from having few expectations to one of expecting a ‘cure’ (Lucy). Mary

Oliver Mason and Isabel Hargreaves202

described her attitude as ‘willing to try anything . . . I thought well, OK, let’s just try
this, and I went along with quite an open mind’. Lucy and Jane reported very high
expectations : Lucy said ‘what I expected was this is going to be it, this is going to help
me’; and was only able to restate her expectations at the end of the course— ‘I really
wanted it to work, I really thought this would help me, but it didn’t’. Jane reported that
she and others were disabused of this idea and that she soon became ‘more realistic’.

When Robert was asked about his expectations, he replied : ‘I suppose I thought, well,
I’ve got this problem, and I want to énd a solution that isn’t based on medication, if at all
possible, so I’ll give it a go, and I went along with an open mind and just thought it is
worth a try basically, but I had no preconceptions about what it was’. Carys suggested
that she found it most helpful to try and suspend judgement and not even look for
beneéts. Kabat-Zinn (1990) has suggested that these are the most useful expectations to
have.

Initial negative experiences
Several participants referred to a period early in the course that they found challenging
and sometimes negative. Lucy said, ‘I just felt I wasn’t able to do what I was supposed to
do’. Expecting the course to help her control her mind, she found ‘my mind would still
wander a lot and I would get very édgety after a while’. As a consequence of both her
expectations and initial experiences, her practice and enthusiasm dwindled. Similarly,
Pam reported thinking, ‘I am only doing this because I am depressed, the whole of the
érst week they [homework exercises] were all negative experiences’, and ‘oh dear, I’m not
breathing’ and ‘my thoughts aren’t working right’. A concern with ‘driving to get it
right’ (Mary) was an early obstacle for several participants. Each found a different
solution —Mary ‘realised that wasn’t really the point, the goal isn’t getting ten out of ten
for your body scan, the goal is letting it happen and looking at what happens’.
Participants differed in the extent to which they altered their perspective in this direction
during the course.

‘Coming to terms’
This category has been labelled with a phrase taken from Pam’s account, but might have
used a phrase from Jane —‘Stop, and start thinking’. Mary similarly reèected that she
learnt ‘with the mindfulness . . . to stop and look and say, OK, I know what has
happened’. Jane stated ‘I’ve started letting myself learn from things that I have done
wrong or . . . done unhelpfully [laughs]’. The category described a process that many
participants felt continued after the conclusion of the course. Mark stated that at a
difécult time in the fortnight following the course: ‘the programming of the programme
kicked in. It’s like Jon Kabat-Zinn says, you weave your . . . parachute and I’d obviously
woven it. So I guess that night I needed the parachute and it was there’. The diversity of
coding and concepts relate to this category led us to form several subcategories, described
below.

Group support and identiécation. All participants reported énding the ‘familiar faces’ of the
group a supportive and learning experience despite some concerns to the contrary. Jane

203Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy

reported that ‘They are all ordinary people you know, they are you and me . . . that helped
enormously’. Mary similarly found that ‘support was built up as people started to share
their experiences, you actually got drawn in and became sort of interested in what was
happening for other people and you’d think Ah! Yeah! Mmm, that has happened for me’.
Several participants described how their experience of the group facilitated discovery (see
below). Mark gave a description that links group support with his attitude to the course
and overcoming negative experiences : ‘I think I had problems like everybody else, but if I
remember correctly, somebody said whatever happens is part of it, and I took that on
board, and I dare say we discussed this in the group as well, ‘cos somebody would say this
isn’t working for me and, oh yeah, I am having that trouble, so there’s a kind of
interaction in the group and you work through that’.

Discovery/‘surprise’. For the participants who described therapeutic gains, all described one
or more points of discovery, often with a sense of surprise. Jane said that her experience of
mindfulness meditation brought ‘a deeper understanding of what was going on . . . what
was causing the depression’. She reported that this ‘wasn’t always easy’ and ‘brought
additional problems’ related to retrieving childhood memories. Mary described a process
of discovery starting with the very érst exercise: it ‘opened her mind even more [than she
expected] and was quite . . . scary in a way, because it was realms I had never entered
before’. Later on in the course she made the discovery —‘which I didn’t realize until doing
mindfulness’— that the sensations she felt in social situations of ‘getting really hot and
starting shaking’ were anxiety-related. This led to her taking action in the form of
breathing spaces (see Skills below). When asked about any surprises or discoveries he had
made, Robert stated that ‘the key discovery overall has been that often what goes through
your mind are just mental phenomena, they are just thoughts, not necessarily truths’.

In addition to these points of understanding reached during the course, several
participants described points of discovery (some unwelcome) either at the termination of
the course or subsequently. Discussing termination, Robert said ‘I think we all felt that
the carpet had been pulled from under us’. Mark also described his crisis at the end of the
course: ‘It’s strange, that was so vivid, really incredibly difécult to describe the intensity
of what I was feeling. It was as though I’d suspended all the problems I had had, anxiety
and [pause] you know how your mind churns over problems. It was as if it had held them
in abeyance for eight weeks, and then all of a sudden, poof, I was lying in bed and I
thought it’s OK, it’s OK to feel these things, and I think that was the thing about it, it’s
OK to feel whatever you feel, they are not going to swamp the person’.

Relaxation. The majority of participants reported one of the beneéts of listening to tapes
to be calmness or relaxation, although this is explicitly not their stated aim. Jane reported
that ‘it calmed me down a lot’ and created ‘a space of calmness’. Lucy reported her stated
aim as relaxation, and her intermittent experience of this led to her re-commitment to
practice at the end of the course. Unfortunately, as relaxation was not consistently
forthcoming, she soon stopped this practice.

Interestingly, as the interview with Carys progressed, she realized that her meditation
practice had different effects depending on her posture: ‘I think the lying down one, I
think I take as a bit of relaxation, rather than the other one [using a chair or stool] which

Oliver Mason and Isabel Hargreaves204

is doing meditating . . . and I think that when I am feeling a bit stressed I use the stool
more, which is something I haven’t noticed before’.

Skills. This category contains codes concerning the development of mindfulness skills in
meditation, yoga, and breathing spaces. Most strikingly, participants differed greatly in
their degree of success with different skills.

Jane reported that: ‘I didn’t get the point [of breathing spaces] at all’ and found the
practice very confusing. In contrast, Mary reported that ‘through the breathing exercise
. . . you know something’s bothering you, you can’t eradicate what’s there, but you can
acknowledge it so it can’t take you over, it can’t just happen automatically. You have a
choice’. Pam’s use of breathing spaces differed from Mary’s: previously familiar with some
cognitive behavioural literature, she described ‘counting to ten and pulling yourself
together’. Her interpretation of much of the course was one of helping her address
negative thinking by ‘reminding yourself that it is not your fault’ and mentally reciting
‘thoughts aren’t facts . . . even the ones that tell you they are’. She described mindfulness
as ‘going into yourself and exploring it’. Mary also reèected on ‘analysing what happens’
during meditation, but suggested that this was in fact ‘another trap’. Instead, she felt that
the skill is one of ‘just looking at what happens, not taking it to pieces trying to
understand what’s going on’. Mary described the skill she acquired from meditating thus,
‘the . . . course teaches you to recognize what’s in your head or acknowledge the fact . . .
OK, I’ve got a problem, and if it comes back again, you look at it again, and if it comes
back again— this is the way I do it— let’s look at it properly— why are you feeling
scared, why are you feeling uncomfortable about it? I don’t analyse it in a way, but I just
sort of break it up a bit, so by saying I feel scared about it, I feel angry about it, just to
myself . . . it just disperses it’.

Robert and Mark described how mindfulness practice appeared to introduce a
‘distance’ from their problems: at times of ‘mind overload . . . it’s as if there is a switch
in the mind now that goes, hang on, stop, be mindful, and we will start with this bit érst.
Its like an automatic correction that instead of getting bogged down with the mind
trying to [pause], it’s the ability to step back from that and hold the mind there. Just sort
it out, just do one thing, I think that is the thing it does, it gives focus all the time.
Because it is easy to be swamped by whatever is on the mind. [Interviewer : And that
ability remains even in periods of lowness?] It does, yes. I don’t know what it does. It’s so
powerful, yet it is so simple. It’s as if I have got two eyes. One is the one that interacts all
the time, is automatic. And there is another one that I can go into and its almost at the
back here so that I am looking at myself, but it’s very intimate if you like, the border
between it is very thin. And it is a very small eye, but a very powerful eye and it holds
everything. And I can go to that point through mindfulness or meditation and hold or be
with whatever happens. . . . I lost my father last year so there was a lot of grief. And I was
able to meditate with that grief and actually see it or feel it come up and allow it to come
out, ‘cos one of the problems I had was bottling things up. So I feel myself getting rather
unhappy about losing my father, so I was able to sit quietly, allow it to come up and have
a good cry. It’s been a very valuable grief and a very pure one, and I now énd that when I
think of my father there is less a sense of loss and grief, and more a sense of honouring
him’. We have chosen to retain this long passage in full because it poignantly illustrates

205Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy

the links between his former coping style, the skills and attitudes invoked by his practice
of mindfulness and their application to major loss.

A ccepting attitude. Many of the codes applied to products of the course did not address
skills directly, but tapped a change in attitude towards acceptance, èexibility, and ‘living
in the moment’ (Pam). Mary said that ‘during the eight weeks I realized that it was
possibly my attitude and the way I was running myself that led énally to the way I am’.
Instead, ‘through the mindfulness and acknowledging what is going on in the moment,
be it birds singing or walking along . . . you can start to enjoy life as it is happening rather
than looking to the past or the future’. Jane spoke of an attitude of trusting in the
moment and reèected on the challenge this presents: ‘mindfulness is like if you live this
moment, the future generally takes care of itself. It’s a bit frightening at times . . . does
everything just fall into place?’.

The issue of ‘acceptance’ and just what this entailed provoked several comments and a
sense of personal struggle. In the context of her medical diféculties, Jane said ‘the
acceptance area is the hardest thing to accept, I struggle very strongly with that—I
thought, well I can’t accept this; I don’t want to accept what my life could be, you know,
its um [pause] to me it was too terrifying, I struggle hard with that bit’. Both
participants suffering from symptoms of chronic fatigue also spoke about accepting
their conditions. For example, Pam said that ‘nine days out of ten I do use the
mindfulness and do accept it. I choose and I know what the consequences are going to
be, but some days . . . I am still anxious and depressed [laughs]’. Several participants
found humour and ‘fun’ in their response to life diféculties as part of a change of attitude.

‘Warning bells’. This category refers to participants’ developing awareness of personal
indicators of worsening mental state : it is an explicit aim of MBCT that awareness of
‘warning signs’ is increased and several references helped elucidate how warning signs
could be used. Mary described how the regular practice of mindfulness could help her to
predict the status of her M.E. symptoms: ‘hang on, I can almost predict what I am going
to feel after doing something just by being aware of how I feel two days before; just
because every day I dipped into myself and thought, OK, so this is how I am feeling now’.
Mindfulness practice not only helped Robert predict periods of low mood but, crucially,
to respond: ‘I’ve always felt the biggest challenge [to meditating] comes when you are
feeling pretty low, because it’s at those times it is less easy to meditate. I énd there’s less
motivation to do it, and [pause] but the need to do it is greater. When things are bad it’s
important to do it, I think, because it reconnects you with the whole programme and the
whole ethos behind it, which you can easily forget if you start to go down. [Interviewer :
So how do you spot that— when you start to go down?] I suppose they are personal to
some extent. I think the triggers are sluggishness and disturbed sleep. [Interviewer : so
does that bring you back to meditating pronto or . . .?] Not pronto, at least not always.
It’s a prompt to do something, certainly . . . whereas before I would have simply been
dragged along, dragged down by it, and I would have felt more hopeless’.

The category title itself was taken from Carys’s report: ‘I think I can hear warning bells
when something is not quite right . . . one of my greatest warning signs is waking up in
the middle of the night’. When this happens, Carys makes ‘real efforts to do the tapes . . .

Oliver Mason and Isabel Hargreaves206

maybe three nights in a row’. Linked to the variance in the amount of her practice, Carys
also described how ‘I do tend to notice that if I haven’t been doing them [tapes], my
concentration does waver a bit and I énd myself having sat for a couple of nights without
doing anything and I get more tired doing nothing than something so it jolts me back
again’. Carys uses breathing spaces regularly to help her identify signs, and then takes
action by meditating.

‘Bringing it into everyday’
This in vivo code refers to the many ways in which skills were brought into everyday
living —something that several described as essential to therapeutic gain. Carys said, ‘I
use those little tips like using my breathing while I am waiting for the kettle to boil’; and
described how her everyday activity of going for a walk has changed: ‘I used to walk for
hours and not see things, and now I’ll sort of consciously say, I’ll stop in half an hour and
look around, or I’ll just go the top and stop and have a look around and see what is there,
which makes it much more pleasurable as well’.

One noteworthy example of the ‘everyday’ application of mindfulness was described by
Mark who suffered a car crash when going to see his father in hospital: There was traféc
everywhere. I sat there. I said right, I am going to do some breathing now, as I sat there,
and I just had a few mindful breaths, it just came into my mind automatically, do some
mindful breaths now. So I sat there and there is all this stuff, I could hear cars squealing
behind and people pulling up behind and I had a few breaths and got out of the car. I just
dealt with the situation quite calmly and rationally, yeah, I was shook up and everything
but being with it as well. And that is a total about face, because there was a time, when I
would have hit the ceiling . . . and afterwards I thought, it can really work, can’t it?’.

Therapeutic process
As the categories evolved, we developed a diagram to reèect their inter-relationships, so
reèecting the process of therapeutic change (see Fig. 1). Individual differences existed at
many stages in the model, and the stages are not intended to be in a strictly linear or
causal sequence.

Construction of the diagram helped to elucidate the roles of several categories and
subcategories. The mediating role of expectations between the individual and the therapy
can be seen to be central to therapeutic gain. In some cases these expectations were revised
after negative initial experiences. The subcategory of skills was positioned in a central
role within the category of coming to terms. The group could be said to offer a safe place
in which to learn skills, and beneét from others’ experiences. The development of skills led to
discoveries, experiences of relaxation and calm, as well as promoting a change in attitude.

Lucy’s account was a notable exception to this process, as she did not describe
therapeutic gains. The diagram makes sense of the plausible relationship between her
attitudes before the course, her expectations of it and her subsequent largely negative
experience of participation. Her attitude of ‘receiving a treatment’ coupled with
expecting to be cured, can be seen to have led to her failure to practice skills. In turn,
of course, despite good intentions, she has yet to bring mindfulness into her everyday life,
and remains willing to come back to a practice of mindfulness when she is ‘more relaxed’.

207Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy

Discussion

The study set out both to explore participants’ accounts of mindfulness meditation in the
mental –health context, to shed light on cognitive theories of mood disorder, and to
explore the use of qualitative methods in the study of cognitive therapies. What are the
lessons from the theory that may be learned for future courses and their trainers? Obvious
enough that it perhaps is easy to overlook, it is important to note the generic nature of the
course and the diversity of diféculties participants brought to it. There was notable
anecdotal evidence of beneéts for two participants with symptoms of chronic fatigue
syndrome co-morbid with depression.

A clear message from several participants was that their initial expectations were
important to later insight and practice. Those with open and èexible expectations
described fewer barriers and initial negative experiences than those with rigid, and highly
optimistic, ones. Some participants adjusted unrealistic expectations during the early
sessions, perhaps having to admit, painfully at érst, that an externally imposed solution
would not remove their distress. This process of reappraisal was linked to their ‘coming to
terms’ with their life situation, thoughts or feelings. Although only a single case, it is
striking that the only participant not to report therapeutic gains retained a highly
unrealistic set of expectations about mindfulness meditation.

The category of ‘coming to terms’ was at the heart of the énal diagram (Fig. 1), and
contained both participants’ internalization of the course (skills, attitude, etc.), and their
personal experiences related to their attendance and practice. The development of core

Oliver Mason and Isabel Hargreaves208

Figure 1. Diagram of categories.

skills in mindfulness lies at the heart of this therapeutic process; but changes in attitude
and the support of the group also enabled skill acquisition. Generalization of these skills
to situations of everyday living was also seen to be crucial to the continuing use of
mindfulness.

By way of a critique of our own model, we must acknowledge an implicitly
individualist orientation that may have relegated the role of group support and
interpersonal process. We were careful to consider the relative merits of recognizing
this role as a category in its own right (it was described by every participant), or as a
subcategory as we énally described it. The evidence for this came from the way
participants described the importance and utility of the group as an aid to skills learning
and in facilitating discovery. We would emphasize the important, indeed essential, role of
the group in combination with the other elements of the process of ‘coming to terms’
with diféculties and problems.

Testing the cognitive explanation of mood disturbance
The intervention was described earlier as arising out of a theoretical cognitive framework
called ICS (Teasdale & Barnard, 1993). The ICS model suggested that interventions
should attempt to allow the experiencing of mild negative effect without depressive
cognitions ‘taking over’ producing the conditions for depressive interlock. Some of the
participants’ statements (see Skills), illustrated how some were able to experience
tolerable levels of affect while being aware for example that: ‘you know something is
bothering you, you can’t eradicate what’s there, but you can acknowledge it so it can’t
take you over— it can’t just happen automatically, you have a choice’. In this way,
negative affect may be experienced without all the attendant depressive thoughts (often
without full conscious awareness that this is the case).

Furthermore, there was some evidence that participants synthesize new models out of
the thoughts and attributions that formerly composed depressive schematic models.
Mary described how when difécult thoughts and feelings arise in meditation, ‘you
recognize what is in your head and acknowledge the fact . . . OK, I’ve got a problem . . .
let’s look at it properly . . . why are you feeling scared? . . . I don’t analyse it in a way, but I
just sort of break it up a bit, by saying I feel scared about it . . . it just disperses it’. This
account is consistent with the breaking of one schematic model and the reconstruction of
another with the fragments of implicational code without the emotional ‘heat’. The ICS
theory also suggested the crucial role of body-state information in contributing to
depressive interlock. Interestingly, Carys had noticed that using a sitting position during
times of stress could address depressive thinking in a way that a prone position could not.

The ICS account (Teasdale & Barnard, 1993) also suggested that possessing a
‘thoughts-as-thoughts’ perspective rather than a ‘thoughts-as-reality’ perspective helps
alter depressogenic schemas because it generates non-depressogenic implicational codes.
Several participants reported that they often used the phrase ‘thoughts aren’t facts’ when
difécult thoughts arise, and that this and related ‘distancing’ practices helped identify
‘negative thinking’. Although it is difécult to explain what occurred at moments of
‘discovery’ or ‘surprise’, they are conceivably points at which key changes were made to
schematic models by adding or subtracting implicational codes making a key difference
to the maintenance of affect. Mark described how, following the course, a èood of

209Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy

problems threatened to overcome him— ‘and I thought, it’s OK, it’s OK to feel whatever
you feel, they are not going to swamp the person’. Such discoveries could be interpreted as
evidence of a kind of meta-cognitive insight (Teasdale, 1999).

A further hypothesis from the ICS framework is that by altering the behavioural and
cognitive consequences of depressive mood and thought they would be allowed to
subside, rather than be maintained by feedback. Mark’s actions after a car crash were the
most striking example of a change in behaviour following a short breathing space.
Alterations in cognitive consequences are implied by both Mary and Mark in the
quotations above in which allowing or accepting thoughts and feelings leads to their
dispersal.

Reèections on the research process
We acknowledge our perspective as cognitive clinical psychologists and have tried to be
aware of our inèuences on model-building. We have tried to make the methodological
process and results as transparent as possible. Interestingly, participants frequently cast
their contributions within a psychotherapeutic discourse, as well as using explicitly
‘cognitivist’ frameworks. These probably reèect both the cultural ‘zeitgeist’ concerning
psychotherapy, as well as speciéc books and professional input of both cognitive and other
psychotherapies they had received. Although we explicitly did not set out to study the
convergence and divergence of different discourses surrounding illness, meditation or
psychotherapy, it was interesting to note that different discourses referred to the body
(meditation as a relaxation aid), the mind (therapy as ‘mind-over-matter’) and, for a
minority, a sense of spiritual development (see Mason, 1999). Moreover, these discourses
were often overlapping or combined in ways that were not entirely consistent within a
single account. As a set of broader issues in the study of mental (and indeed physical)
health and ill health, the discourses of cause, effect and ‘cure’ are a richly deserving area of
research.

As researchers and practitioners we are not immune to our own assumptions about
depression, meditation and therapy (and that of the discipline of contemporary clinical
psychology), and these remain impossible to ‘partial out’ of such a study. We have tried to
use participants’ own words and phrases to allow the reader to make their own judgments
about the trustworthiness of the theory.

Conclusions

We hope that this qualitative study of therapeutic process helps substantiate the role this
approach may have in studying meditation and cognitive therapy. Its strengths lie in its
ability to capture the nuance of personal experience, the ‘unexpected’, and the diversity of
experiences of the ‘same’ therapy. We are not able to make any claims about long-term
efécacy, or predictions about who the therapy is suited to, or how this treatment compares
with another. However, the theory suggests interesting hypotheses for further study of
both a qualitative and quantitative nature. Participants’ reports suggested their initial
expectations of therapy to be highly important inèuences of subsequent therapeutic
change. Do expectations of therapy predict outcome? Strong links were suggested
between consistent practice (therapy ‘homework’) and the process of change. To what

Oliver Mason and Isabel Hargreaves210

extent is daily practice a sine qua non of MBCT? Do practices such as breathing spaces aid
generalization of skills? Can the cognitive and affective change at moments of ‘discovery’
or ‘surprise’ be measured? What is the role of self-representations of ‘the body’ in illness
and recovery? Our study undoubtedly suggests more questions than it answers.

We compared the theory with the theoretical cognitive framework on which MBCT is
predicated. Participants’ accounts did suggest ways in which practice in mindfulness can
help break depressive cycles of thinking, provide alternative ways of understanding one’s
thoughts and feelings, and allow choices of responding. Their reports were consonant
with both the role of schemas as well as the importance of attentional processes in
triggering and maintaining depressive mood. However, we should carry out a critique of
this consonance with an acknowledgement both of participants’ education into the
cognitive account and of our own theoretical orientation.

A cknow ledgments

We would like to thank Sarah Vaughan, Judith Soulsby and Mark Williams for their invaluable assistance in
conducting this research.

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Received 7 April 2000; revised version received 18 September 2000

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