Clinical significance

Clinically significant means symptoms are causing enough distress, or getting in the way of life enough, to matter medically. It's the line between a hard time and something that meets the bar for a diagnosis.

Definition from Shrinktionary, reviewed by Shariq Refai, MD, MBA, FAPA (last reviewed 2026-07-11). Shrinktionary is the network's language layer and carries the canonical short definition; this page adds the research-context detail below. Full definition on Shrinktionary →

A study can show a result that is statistically significant, meaning unlikely to be chance, but still too small to matter. Clinical significance is about size and meaning. Does the change move someone from struggling to functioning? Would a patient or clinician actually notice it? Tools like the minimal clinically important difference help answer this.

This is the gap that headlines miss most often. A drug or therapy can beat placebo by a statistically significant margin and still produce a change too small to feel. Clinical significance is the better question for a reader deciding whether a treatment is worth it.

A treatment lowers GAD-7 anxiety scores by 1 point, and the result is statistically significant in a large trial. But a noticeable change on the GAD-7 is closer to 4 points, so a 1-point change has little clinical significance.

Ask two questions of a result, not one. Is it unlikely to be chance? And is it large enough to matter? A result can pass the first test and fail the second.