Self-Compassion and Mindfulness Apps for Japanese Workers: A Randomized Controlled Trial (Kurosawa et al., 2026)
Mental health problems cost workers and employers dearly, and one of the biggest costs is presenteeism, meaning people who turn up to work but cannot perform at full capacity because of poor health. Mindfulness and self-compassion programs usually involve eight weeks of in-person sessions, which busy employees find hard to attend. A randomized trial in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, from Takumu Kurosawa, Koichiro Adachi and Ryu Takizawa of the University of Tokyo, tested a lighter alternative: a smartphone app that people use on their own, with no facilitator.
The trial enrolled 300 iPhone-using adults in Japan, aged 18 to 54, who worked more than 20 hours a week, had no diagnosed mental disorder and showed low distress at screening. Recruited online in 2022 and 2023, they were randomly assigned to self-compassion meditation (101 people), mindfulness meditation (100) or a waitlist (99). The two meditation groups did one guided session a day for four weeks, lasting about six to twelve minutes, along with short educational modules. The first two weeks were identical, with a breathing meditation and a body scan. In weeks three and four, the self-compassion group practiced a loving-kindness meditation focused on self-kindness and common humanity, while the mindfulness group practiced attention to breath, sound and body. The main outcomes were psychological distress and self-rated work performance, alongside measures such as self-compassion, perceived stress and psychological safety. Participants knew which program they were following, so the trial could not be blinded.
People stuck with it. On average, both groups completed more than 22 of the 28 daily sessions, and about one in five participants dropped out overall. However, when the groups were compared directly, the researchers found no significant differences in how most outcomes changed over time, so neither program clearly outperformed the waitlist or the other program. Within groups, the self-compassion participants improved on work performance, cognitive flexibility, self-compassion and psychological safety, and reported less perceived stress and self-criticism, while the mindfulness group improved mainly on a sense of common humanity. Psychological distress did not change in any group. Interestingly, a secondary analysis did find a group difference on work performance favoring self-compassion, and several of its gains were still visible at one month.
The authors urge caution. Participants started with low distress, leaving little room to improve, and the program was brief, fully self-guided and low in intensity. Work performance was measured with brief self-report items, which may be less sensitive and more open to bias. The waitlist group began a program after four weeks, so the follow-up covers only the two meditation groups, and about a third of those participants did not provide follow-up data.
The authors describe the results as preliminary and say they do not support strong claims that either program is superior. What they do show is that a brief, fully self-guided program is feasible and well used in this setting. Future studies will need longer or more intensive programs, people with higher distress, and more objective measures of work performance.
Reference and link: https://doi.org/10.2196/79991
