Table 4.

Outcomes of meditation interventions that were measured in the 51 eligible study, categorized as positive or negative

Category	Number of studies	Measured baseline participant characteristics
Positive outcomes	68	Heart‐rate variability, meditation practice frequency at home, meditation session attendance, implicit religiousness/spirituality, religion, coherence, sleep duration, mindfulness, visual imagery (during meditation), pleasantness (during meditation), curiosity, positive affect, well‐being, ambiguity tolerance, quality of life, responding to hypertension treatment, executive attention, focusing, health, pain control
Negative outcomes	62	Skin conductance, perceived pain, pain interference, drop‐out rate, perceived stress, PTSD severity, depression, trait anxiety, social anxiety, somatic anxiety, work hours, distress (during meditation), distress, negative affect, discomfort with emotion, worry, fatigue, anger, frequency of substance abuse, rumination, catastrophizing,

The second column represents the number of studies per category and its sum is bigger than the total number of included studies (N = 51) as almost all studies had multiple outcomes. An outcome is categorized as positive if its increase has a positive impact on mental health or as negative if its increase meant a deterioration in mental heal.