BACKGROUND:Depression affects as many as one in five people in their lifetime and often runs a recurrent lifetime course. Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) is an effective psychosocial approach that aims to help people at risk of depressive relapse to learn skills to stay well. However, there is an ‘implementation cliff’: access to those who could benefit from MBCT is variable and little is known about why that is the case, and how to promote sustainable implementation. As such, this study fills a gap in the literature about the implementation of MBCT.