Because mindfulness can be practiced at home and for free, it often seems like the perfect tonic for stress and mental health issues.
Mindfulness is a form of Buddhist meditation that focuses on being aware of what you are sensing, thinking, and feeling in the present moment.
The first recorded evidence of this was found in India and dates back more than 1,500 years ago. The Dharmatrata meditation scriptures, written by Buddhist communities, describe a variety of practices and also include reports of symptoms of depression and anxiety that can 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 an explosion of scientific research in this area, and these studies show that side effects are not uncommon.
A 2022 study of 953 people who regularly meditate in the United States showed that more than 10% of participants experienced side effects that had a significant negative impact on their daily lives and lasted for at least a month.
According to a review of over 40 years of research published in 2020, the most common side effects are anxiety and depression. This is followed by psychotic or delusional symptoms, dissociation or depersonalization, and fear or terror.
The study also found that even people with no previous mental health problems or who had only moderate experience of meditation could experience negative effects and longer-lasting symptoms.
Evidence of these adverse effects has long existed in the Western world.
In 1976, Arnold Lazarus, a key figure in the cognitive behavioral science movement, said that meditation, if practiced indiscriminately, could lead to “serious psychiatric disorders such as depression, agitation, and even decompensation of schizophrenia.”
There’s evidence that mindfulness has a positive effect on people’s health. The problem is that mindfulness coaches, videos, apps and books rarely warn people about its potential negative effects.
In his 2023 book “McMindfulness,” business professor and Buddhist preceptor Ronald Purser writes that mindfulness has become a kind of “capitalist spirituality.”
In the US alone, meditation is worth $2.2 billion (£1.7 billion). It’s time for the mindfulness industry bosses to wake up to their problems.
Jon Kabat-Zinn, a leading figure in the mindfulness movement, said in a 2017 interview with The Guardian that “90% of the research is [into the positive impacts] “It’s below standard.”
In his foreword to the 2015 UK cross-party parliamentary report on mindfulness, Jon Kabat-Zinn suggests that mindfulness meditation can ultimately transform “who we are as people, as individual citizens, as communities and societies, as nations, and as a species.”
Religious fervor is common among its adherents, as it believes that mindfulness has the power to change not just the individual but the course of humanity. Even many atheists and agnostics who practice mindfulness believe the practice has the power to increase peace and compassion in the world.
The media discussion of mindfulness has also been somewhat uneven.
His 2015 book, Buddha Pill, co-authored with clinical psychologist Katherine Wikholm, included a chapter summarizing research on the side effects of meditation. New Scientist Article, BBC Radio 4 documentary.
Yet the most expensive study in the history of meditation science (funded by research charity the Wellcome Trust with more than $8 million) received almost no media coverage in 2022.
The study tested more than 8,000 pupils (aged 11-14) across 84 schools in the UK between 2016 and 2018. Results showed that mindfulness did not improve pupils’ mental health compared to a control group and may even have a detrimental effect on pupils at risk of mental health problems.
Ethical implications
Is it ethical to not mention the side effects when selling mindfulness apps, teaching people meditation classes, or even using mindfulness in clinical practice? Given the evidence of how diverse and common these side effects are, the answer must be no.
However, many meditation and mindfulness teachers believe that these practices can only produce good and are unaware of the possible negative effects.
The most common story I hear from people who have suffered from side effects from meditation is that their teachers don’t believe them. They are usually told that if they just keep meditating, the side effects will go away.
Research into how to practice meditation safely has only recently begun, so there is no clear advice to give to people yet. There is the broader problem that meditation deals with unusual states of consciousness, and there is no psychological theory of mind to help us understand these states.
However, there are resources available to learn about these adverse effects, including websites created by meditators who have experienced serious adverse effects, as well as academic handbooks with sections dedicated to the topic.
In the US, there are clinical services led by mindfulness researchers aimed at people experiencing acute and long-term problems.
For now, if meditation is to be used as a health or therapeutic tool, the public needs to be informed about its potential harms.
Miguel Farias, Associate Professor of Experimental Psychology, Coventry University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
