Mindfulness is something you can practice at home for free, so it often sounds like a great tonic for stress and mental health issues.
Mindfulness is a type of Buddhist-based meditation that focuses on recognizing what you feel, think and feel in the present moment.
The first recorded evidence of this found in India is from over 1,500 years old. Written by the Buddhist community, the Dharmatrāta Meditation Bible describes and contains reports of various practices Symptoms of depression Anxiety that may occur after meditation.
It also details cognitive abnormalities associated with episodes of psychosis, dissociation and depersonalization (when people feel the world is “unreal”).
Over the past eight years, there has been a surge in scientific research in this field. These studies show that negative effects are not rare.
a 2022 Researchusing a sample of 953 US people who regularly meditated, it was shown that over 10% of participants had a major negative impact on their daily lives and experienced side effects that lasted for at least a month.
According to Over 40 years of reviews Of the 2020 studies, the most common negative effects are anxiety and depression. These are followed by psychosis or paranoid symptoms, dissociation or prone to personhood, fear or fear.
The research also discovered that Bad impact It can happen to people who have no previous mental health issues, and only those who have Medium exposure In meditation, and they can connect Long-term symptoms.
The Western world has also had long been evidence of these negative effects.
In 1976, Arnold Lazarus, an important figure in the cognitive and behavioural science movement, said that when meditation was indiscriminately used, meditation was a You can guide it “Serious psychiatric issues such as depression, agitation and even decompensation of schizophrenia.”
There is evidence of mindfulness You can benefit from it Happiness of people. The problem is that mindfulness coaches, videos, apps and books rarely warn people about potential negative effects.
Management and appointed Buddhist teacher Ronald Purser wrote in a 2023 book McMindfulness That mindfulness has become a kind of “capitalist spirituality.”
In the US alone, meditation is worth US$2.2 billion (£1.7 billion). And seniors in the mindfulness industry need to be aware of the problems with meditation.
John Kabato Jin, the key figure behind the mindfulness movement, 2017 Interview “90% of research.” [into the positive impacts] It’s a sub pearl.”
In him preface In response to the 2015 UK Mindfulness All-Party Parliamentary Report, John Kabat Zan suggests that mindfulness meditation can ultimately be transformed “as humans and individual citizens, as communities and societies, as nations and species.”
This religious enthusiasm for the power of mindfulness is to change the flow of humanity among defenders, not just individuals. Even many atheists and agnostics who practice mindfulness Trust this practice It has the power to increase peace and compassion in the world.
Mindfulness media discussions are also somewhat disproportionate.
My book with clinical psychologist Katherine Wikholm in 2015. Buddha Circleincluding a chapter summarizing research into the negative effects of meditation. It was widely spread by the media New Scientist Article, a BBC Radio 4 Documentary.
However, in 2022 there was little media coverage. Most expensive research In the history of meditation science (more than USD8 million funded by the research charity The Wellcome Trust).
This study tested over 8,000 children (ages 11-14) in 84 UK schools from 2016 to 2018. The results showed that mindfulness failed to improve the mental health of children compared to the control group, and could have had a detrimental effect on those at risk for mental health problems.
Ethical meaning
Is it ethical to sell mindfulness apps, teach people meditation classes, or use mindfulness in clinical practice without mentioning its negative effects? Given the evidence of how diverse and common these effects are, the answer must be no.
However, many meditation and mindfulness instructors believe that these practices can only do good and are unaware of the possible negative effects.
The most common explanation I hear from people who have been adversely affected by meditation is that teachers do not believe them. They are usually just said Continue meditation And it disappears.
I’ve only just started researching how to safely practice meditation. So there’s no clear advice yet to give people. Meditation deals with abnormal states of consciousness and has a broader problem in that it does not have a theory of mind of mind that can help you understand these states.
However, there are resources that people can use to learn about these negative effects. These include websites Produced by meditators People who have experienced serious adverse effects Academic Handbook Use a dedicated section for this topic.
It is in the US Clinical Services It is dedicated to people who have experienced acute and long-term problems, led by mindfulness researchers.
For now, if meditation is used as a tool of happiness or treatment, the public should be informed of the potential harm.
Miguel FariasAssociate Professor of Experimental Psychology, Coventry University
This article has been republished conversation Under the Creative Commons license. Please read Original article.
An earlier version of this article was published in July 2024.
