The first mindfulness-based course was developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn in Massachusetts over thirty years ago, for groups of people with a wide range of different health conditions. Since then, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, (MBSR) has developed all over the world. In Calgary, a leading psycho-oncology team have researched MBSR for cancer patients for over ten years (Speca et al., 2000). Evidence is building that mindfulness holds much promise for cancer patients (Shennan et al., 2010).
Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) was developed out of MBSR, and has been found to halve the risk of relapse in people with a history of depression (Segal et al., 2002). NICE (the National Institute for Clinical Excellence), the UK health standards body, explicitly recommends MBCT for people who have had three or more episodes of depression.