Can Meditation Help Anxiety and Depression?

Allison Aubrey's NPR piece, "Mindfulness Meditation Can Help Relieve Anxiety And Depression," takes up a question plenty of people quietly ask themselves: can sitting still and paying attention actually move the needle on how they feel? She works through a stack of studies to see whether mindfulness training and meditation lower anxiety and depression. The idea she keeps circling back to is simple. Train the brain to stay with the present moment, to stop chewing on past regrets and future worries, and some of the mental weight lifts.

The techniques she describes aren't exotic. Visualizations to let go of negative or anxious thoughts. Progressive muscle relaxation. Body scans. A handful of other relaxation methods that anyone can learn.

One study she cites pulled together earlier research on meditation across a wide span of conditions, from breast cancer and irritable bowel syndrome to fibromyalgia and depression. Her conclusion, drawn from the research, is that mindfulness meditation really can ease anxiety and depression.

The strongest backing comes from a review of 47 studies published in JAMA Internal Medicine. Those studies found meditation helps with anxiety, depression, and pain, though it did not appear to do much for substance abuse, sleep, or weight. Dr. Madhav Goyal of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, who authored the paper, put it this way: "We have moderate confidence that mindfulness practices have a beneficial effect." The gains on anxiety, depression, and pain can be modest, he noted, but they show up again and again across different studies. What struck him was how little practice it took. Roughly two and a half hours of meditation a week, and the effects were still consistent.

Aubrey also points to a trial with 163 women diagnosed with stage 1 or stage 2 breast cancer. The women were randomly assigned either to an eight-week mindfulness-based stress reduction class or to more conventional supportive care. Nobody was treating the cancer itself with meditation. The point was helping women cope with the stress that comes bundled with the disease. Four months in, the women who meditated reported meaningful gains in quality of life and coping compared with the other groups.

She is honest about the other side of the ledger. Some studies found little evidence that mindfulness meditation makes much difference for depression, anxiety, or physical conditions like cancer and IBS. What none of them found was harm. That's the thread Aubrey lands on: meditation may not work for everyone, but since it carries no negative side effects, it's a reasonable alternative to try.

The scale of the problem gives the question some urgency. Healthline estimates that roughly 1 in 10 people will experience depression at some point. Depressive symptoms often follow life's harder passages: losing someone close, a health crisis, money trouble, a layoff. There's a real line between ordinary sadness and clinical depression, and it matters.

The National Alliance on Mental Illness fills in the numbers. About 6.7 percent of American adults, roughly 14.8 million people, live with major depression. Around 18.1 percent, about 42 million, live with an anxiety disorder of some kind, including panic disorder, OCD, PTSD, generalized anxiety, and phobias. Another 9.2 million adults carry both a mental health condition and an addiction at the same time.

Stress and mental health struggles seem to keep climbing. Many people manage symptoms with medication. Others find they need something more, and stress reduction through meditation becomes part of that. And some would rather skip medication altogether and go the holistic route, which makes it sensible to keep alternatives on the table for anxiety, depression, and even physical illness.

So where does that leave things? The research suggests some improvement for anxiety and depression. For medical and substance abuse issues, the gains look slim. But no study turned up a downside. Since we're all built differently, the approach will help some people more than others. Given that it costs nothing, requires no equipment, and can be done anywhere, there's little reason not to try it alongside other treatment. Success, I think, hinges on two things: being taught properly by a practitioner, and the patient actually sticking with the practice. As mental health problems become more common, mindfulness meditation deserves to keep being studied. (Kim Nygaard)

A note on the stakes. "Stress kills" turns up more and more in medical conversations around the country, and far too often among the families left behind after someone dies young. The phrase had a grim echo back in the 1950s, when overworked men dropped dead of heart attacks at 50. So why does stress keep slipping through unchecked today? Anxiety and depression get ignored, put off, or misdiagnosed. The symptoms, pushed down rather than treated, grind away at people physically, mentally, and emotionally. That pressure surfaces as real illness, instability, sometimes death.

What this article makes clear is that practitioners are warming to meditation as a tool for anxiety and depression. It costs nothing. It doesn't depend on where you are. It needs no guide or group. It doesn't have to be spiritual at all. The option is always there. That said, stress shows up as a factor in all sorts of diagnoses, and meditation on its own should never stand in for real treatment of a disease like cancer or diabetes. Paired with regular care from a physician, though, it has proven useful against the stress a disease and its treatment pile on. Put plainly: meditation can't hurt, and it very well might help. (Bergen)

Source: Aubrey, Allison (January 7, 2014). Mindfulness Meditation Can Help Relieve Anxiety And Depression. NPR.