Differential reduction of psychological distress by three different types of meditation-based mental training programs: A randomized clinical trial.

Objective: There is little knowledge about which types of meditation-based training are effective for alleviating which facets of psychological distress. We investigated shared and specific effects of three meditation-based training programs on distress.

Method: 332 healthy adults were assigned to a retest control cohort or to one of three 3-month mental training cohorts including: the cultivation of mindfulness-based attention (), socio-affective skills such as compassion (), or metacognitive skills such as perspective taking (). A battery of 68 self-reported distress measures was collected. Data were analyzed using machine learning methods, identifying the cohort allocation based on distress change scores.

Results: Supporting only specific and not shared alleviation effects, the classifiers identified significantly above chance from and from , but they did not identify the training cohorts from the retest cohorts.

Conclusions: The classifiers revealed stable module-associated distress change profiles, which could help to precisely choose meditation-based interventions to target individuals' specific distress patterns.