Mindfulness meditation, a practice with deep roots in eastern traditions, has gained widespread public and scientific interest. Mindfulness is a natural state of present-moment awareness, and interventions have been developed to train this skill. This review discusses the concept of mindfulness and its use in treating psychiatric disorders. It identifies which patients benefit from mindfulness-based interventions and summarizes how they work, including cognitive, psychological, and neural mechanisms that drive clinical improvements. The review offers a foundation for incorporating these interventions into clinical practice.
Patients with treatment-resistant depression whose symptoms are loosely connected before ketamine therapy are more likely to respond than those with tightly linked symptoms. Among 447 patients receiving intravenous ketamine or intranasal eskatamine, non-responders had denser pre-treatment symptom networks (global strength 4.03) compared with responders (global strength 1.06). After treatment, responders' network strength increased, while non-responders' decreased. Sparse baseline symptom networks may indicate greater capacity for reorganization, making pre-treatment network density a potential marker of ketamine response.