As a TMA practitioner for a couple of decades+, I am going to say that it has both helped and hurt things, but that the same thing could be said about any martial arts system.
First the negative:
Some people get enamored with the pure fighting aspect of the martial arts, and ignore many wonderful things about the non-sparring parts of the systems. Also, some people look at full contact matches, and grow impatient when I tell them that we don't do full contact here at the dojo.
I'm more than happy to answer a student's question, as to why they need to learn the basics, learn the kata, etc. It's only natural for the students to ask questions, and this is almost always encouraged.
It's when I have to answer questions coming from a student who says "Why do I have to do these stupid kata? This is ********, that it's taking away from my fighting time."
I'm not going to pin the blame on the MMA, though, since this kind of individual would probably try to find a way to quit sooner, rather than later. In this case, it's not really a matter of the MMA being bad, but rather, someone interpreting it badly.
After all, it comes down to a personal decision of someone to do what they do. The bottle of Jack Daniels, for example, did not cause Chappaqudick!
Now on to the positive:
The popularity of MMA has brought in people to come visit the dojo to see what we're about, and from those people, I can actually enroll a fair number of them. Thus, the popularity of MMA has helpd us overcome one of the more difficult tasks, and that's to get the people in the dojo in the first place.
All in all? The positives far, far, outweigh the negatives. Thus, I would say that overall, it does help.
