Clinical trials on anxiety and depression symptoms should employ uniform diagnosis, outcome selection and reporting criteria, which will be helpful for comparisons among studies; furthermore, to mitigate the psychological component of subjective metrics, objective metrics related to anxiety and depression, such as circulating 5-HT (49), cortisol and adrenocorticotropic hormone (50) levels, and electroencephalography (51), could be used to evaluate the anti-anxiety-depressive effects of mindfulness. Here, POMC is linked to major depressive disorder.