Stress, anxiety disorders, depression: getting professional help is anything but easy for people with mental illnesses – not just since the Corona crisis.

Because the waiting lists for psychotherapists are long.

But meditation apps such as Headspace from America can apparently help people to strengthen their mental health quite effectively.

This is the conclusion reached by researchers Advik Shreekumar and Pierre-Luc Vautrey from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in a new study.

Britta Beeger

Editor in Business.

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For the experiment, more than 2,300 Americans acquired via Facebook and Instagram used the Headspace app for four weeks free of charge.

According to the company of the same name, it contains hundreds of guided audio meditations on topics such as stress management, restful sleep, concentration and mental health, has been downloaded more than 70 million times and is also available in Germany for 13 euros a month.

Using detailed questionnaires, the two scientists found that the study participants showed significantly fewer symptoms of stress, anxiety disorders and depression after four weeks.

The proportion of those showing moderate symptoms of anxiety or depression fell by 11 to 13 percentage points, less than half that of the control group (26 to 29 percent).

Even participants with only mild or minimal symptoms at the start of the study showed huge improvements, the authors write.

Substitute for psychotherapy?

From their results, they conclude that meditation apps can have a similar effect to classic – and much more expensive – psychotherapies.

However, caution is appropriate with this interpretation.

On the one hand, the researchers themselves point out that studies on the effectiveness of classic psychotherapies usually contain a placebo control - but that was not so easy to do in this case.

Instead, people in the control group were put on a waiting list to use the app.

Conversely, this means that even the idea of ​​being treated effectively could have had a positive effect on those study participants who actually used the app.

On the other hand, the two researchers write that the effects are often measured over a longer period of time.

Nevertheless, they are convinced of their study results - especially since the app also had a positive effect in other respects.

The users were less influenced by their feelings when making certain decisions than the control group and were also more productive when checking a text for spelling mistakes.

Shreekumar and Vautrey therefore recommend politicians and companies to subsidize applications such as Headspace - this could also be financially worthwhile.

However, it is unclear how to convince users to use the app in the long term.

In the study, interest quickly decreased significantly.

In the first two weeks, every second person used the app at least every three days, after four to eight weeks it was only one in ten.