A new trial has examined this question: Segal et al. The short answer is that 8 weeks of mindfulness mediation training was just as good as prolonged antidepressant treatment over 18 months. But like all clinical trials, there are some catches.
The 160 patients in this trial were initially treated with antidepressants, starting with an SSRI, and if that didn't work, moving onto venlafaxine (up to 375 mg, as necessary, which is a serious dose) or mirtazapine for people who couldn't take the side effects. This is a sensible treatment regime, not one relying on low doses and doubtful drugs, as in many other antidepressant trials.
About half of the patients both stayed in the trial and achieved remission. After 5 months of sustained treatment, these 84 patients were randomized into 3 groups: continuation of their antidepressant, placebo pills, or mindfulness. The people who ended up on placebo had their antidepressants gradually replaced by sugar pills over a number of weeks, to avoid withdrawal effects.
People on placebo did very badly, with only 20% remaining well 18 months later. People who either stayed on the drugs, or who got the mindfulness training, did a lot better, with 70% staying well, and there were no differences between the two.
However here's the catch. This was only true of a sub-set of the patients, the ones who had an "unstable remission", meaning that when they were originally treated with drugs, their symptoms went up and down a bit. The "stable remission" people showed no benefits of either treatment, with the ones on placebo doing slightly better, if anything.
Overall, though, this is a decent study, and shows that, for some people, mindfulness can be helpful. A skeptic could complain that mindfulness was no better than medication, but it might have two advantages: cost, and side effects, though this would depend on the medication you were talking about (some are a lot more expensive, and more prone to side-effects, than others.) The mindfulness meditation also wasn't double-blind, so the benefits may have been placebo effects, but that could be said of almost any trial of psychotherapy."
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