Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C, or D on your answer sheet to indicate the best answer to each of the following questions.
(I) Since mindfulness is something you can practice at home for free, it often sounds like the perfect tonic for stress and mental health issues. (II) Mindfulness is a type of Buddhist-based meditation in which you focus on being aware of what you’re sensing, thinking and feeling in the present moment. The first recorded evidence for this, found in India, is over 1,500 years old. (III) The Dharmatrāta Meditation Scripture, written by a community of Buddhists, describes various practices and includes reports of symptoms of depression and anxiety that can occur after meditation. (IV) (when people feel the world is “unreal”).
In the past eight years there has been a surge of scientific research in this area. These studies show that adverse effects are not rare. A 2022 study, using a sample of 953 people in the US who meditated regularly, showed that over 10% of participants experienced adverse effects which had a significant negative impact on their everyday life and lasted for at least one month. According to a review of over 40 years of research that was published in 2020, the most common adverse effects are anxiety and depression. These are followed by psychotic or delusional symptoms, dissociation or depersonalisation, and fear or terror. Research also found that adverse effects can happen to people without previous mental health problems, to those who have only had a moderate exposure to meditation and they can lead to long-lasting symptoms.
The western world has also had evidence about 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 wellbeing. The problem is that mindfulness coaches, videos, apps and books rarely warn people about the potential adverse effects.
Media discussion of mindfulness has also been somewhat imbalanced. In 2015, my book with clinical psychologist Catherine Wikholm, Buddha Pill, included a chapter summarizing the research on meditation adverse effects. It was widely disseminated by the media, including a New Scientist article, and a BBC Radio 4 documentary. But there was little media coverage in 2022 of the most expensive study in the history of meditation science (over US$8 million funded by research charity the Wellcome Trust). The study tested more than 8,000 children (aged 11-14) across 84 schools in the UK from 2016 to 2018. Its results showed that mindfulness failed to improve the mental wellbeing of children compared to a control group, and may even have had detrimental effects on those who were at risk of mental health problems.
Many meditation and mindfulness instructors believe that these practices can only do good and don’t know about the potential for adverse effects. Research about how to safely practice meditation has only recently begun, which means there isn’t yet clear advice to give people. There is a wider problem in that meditation deals with unusual states of consciousness and we don’t have psychological theories of mind to help us understand these states. For now, if meditation is to be used as a wellbeing or therapeutic tool, the public needs to be informed about its potential for harm.
(Adapted from: https://theconversation.com + Adjusted by CEMA – Hoài Sơn)
