Meditation can be harmful – and can even make mental health problems worse World news

Coventry University

Coventry , Because mindfulness is something you can practice for free at home, it often sounds like the perfect tonic for stress and mental health issues. Mindfulness is a type of meditation based on Buddhism where you focus on being aware of what you feel, think and feel in the present moment.

The first recorded evidence for it, found in India, is over 1,500 years old. The Dharmatrāta meditation scripture, written by a community of Buddhists, describes various practices and includes reports of symptoms of depression and anxiety that may occur after meditation. It also details the cognitive abnormalities associated with episodes of psychosis, dissociation, and depersonalization.

In the last eight years there has been an increase in scientific research in this field. These studies show that adverse effects are not uncommon. A 2022 study using a sample of 953 people in the US who meditated regularly found that more than 10% of participants experienced adverse effects that had a significant negative impact on their daily life and lasted for a little over a month.

According to a review of over 40 years of research that was published in 2020, the most common side effects are anxiety and depression. These are followed by psychotic or delusional symptoms, dissociation or depersonalization, and fear or terror.

Research has also found that adverse effects can happen to people with no prior mental health problems, those who have had only moderate exposure to meditation, and can lead to long-lasting symptoms.

The Western world has also had evidence of these adverse effects for a long time. In 1976, Arnold Lazarus, a key figure in the cognitive-behavioral science movement, said that meditation, when used indiscriminately, could induce “serious psychiatric problems such as depression, agitation, and even schizophrenic decompensation.”

There is evidence that mindfulness can benefit people’s well-being. The problem is that mindfulness coaches, videos, apps, and books rarely warn people about the potential side effects.

Management professor and ordained Buddhist teacher Ronald Purser wrote in his 2023 book McMindfulness that mindfulness has become a kind of “capitalist spirituality.” In the US alone, meditation is worth $2.2 billion. And senior figures in the mindfulness industry should be aware of the problems with meditation.

Jon Kabat-Zinn, a key figure behind the mindfulness movement, admitted in a 2017 interview with The Guardian that “90% of the research (on the positive impacts) is subpar.”

In his foreword to the 2015 UK All-Party Parliamentary Report, Jon Kabat-Zinn suggests that mindfulness meditation can ultimately transform “who we are as human beings and individual citizens, as communities and societies, as nations and as a species” .

This religious enthusiasm for the power of attention to change not only individual people but the course of humanity is common among advocates. Even many atheists and agnostics who practice mindfulness believe that this practice has the power to increase peace and compassion in the world.

Media discussion of mindfulness has also been somewhat unbalanced. In 2015, my book with clinical psychologist Catherine Wikholm, Buddha Pill, included a chapter summarizing research on the adverse effects of meditation. It was widely covered by the media, including a New Scientist article and a BBC Radio 4 documentary.

But in 2022 there was little media coverage of the most expensive study in the history of meditation science. The study tested more than 8,000 children in 84 UK schools from 2016 to 2018. Its results showed that mindfulness failed to improve children’s mental wellbeing compared to a control group and may even have had harmful effects on those who were at risk. of mental health problems.

Ethical implications

Is it ethical to sell mindfulness apps, teach people meditation classes, or even use mindfulness in clinical practice without mentioning its adverse effects? Given how varied and common these effects are, the answer should be no.

However, many meditation and mindfulness instructors believe that these practices can only do good and are unaware of the potential for adverse effects. The most common story I hear from people who have experienced adverse effects from meditation is that teachers don’t believe them. They are usually told to keep meditating and it will go away.

Research on how to practice meditation safely has only recently begun, which means there is no clear advice to give people yet. There is a wider problem in that meditation deals with unusual states of consciousness, and we have no psychological theories of mind to help us understand these states.

But there are resources people can use to learn about these side effects. These include websites produced by meditators who have experienced serious adverse effects and academic textbooks with sections devoted to the subject. In the US there is a clinical service for people who have experienced acute and long-term problems, run by a mindfulness researcher.

For now, if meditation is to be used as a wellness or therapeutic tool, the public must be made aware of its potential for harm. AMS AMS

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