All together now: utilizing common functional change principles to unify cognitive behavioral and mindfulness-based...

Cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) and mindfulness-based interventions (MBI) have made important contributions to resolving the global burden of mental illness. However, response rates are comparatively more modest for the distress disorders. Newer CBTs enriched with MBI components have emerged with promising findings for distress disorders but with a high degree of heterogeneity and, subsequently, an unclear path for determining the unique and synergistic contributions from CBTs and MBIs. We propose that one way to elucidate and improve upon this union is to identify common overarching principles (i.e. attention change; metacognitive change) that guide both approaches and to refine therapeutic processes to optimally reflect these common targets and their interplay (e.g. sequencing and dosing).