Meditation and Mindfulness Overcome Depression

Scientists demonstrate in a new study that people who are mindful of life, and willing to meditate daily on the current events in their life, are able to resist depression relapses just as efficiently as patients who take prescription drugs.

Depression is known to come in bouts, and to affect people who have already suffered from it more than it does others. Meditation is shaping up to be an excellent weapon for preventing this, the new paper shows.

The new investigation on mindfulness-based cognitive therapy was conducted by Canadian researchers at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health, and led by study researcher Zindel V. Segal.

According to official statistics, only 40 percent of depression patients stick to the antidepressant therapies that have been prescribed to them. These drugs have direct effect on ares of the brain that have been proven to play a role in underlying depression.

Segal argues in the new paper that mindfulness therapy could be used as either a substitute or an addition to conventional, antidepressant-based therapies.

“When you do that, you gain better control over cognitive emotions that can trigger relapse without you being aware of it,” the expert says, quoted by LiveScience.

“If someone is on an antidepressant, coming off needs to be decision made with a health care professional,” Segal cautions. Details of the work appear in the December issue of the esteemed medical journal Archives of General Psychiatry.

In the experiments the researcher conducted, he and his team studies 84 people who were in remission, aged between 18 and 65. All of them had taken antidepressants for at least 8 months prior to the study.

The participants were divided into three groups. The first continued taking the same medication, the second underwent mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, and the third slowly had their usual drugs replaced by placebo substances.

“All of these patients received treatment through a hospital, so this is something that was conducted with mental health professionals keeping track of them continuously to detect possible relapse,” Segal goes on to say.

The study carried on for a year and a half. At the end of the experiment, 60 percent of people in the placebo group and 46 percent of patients in the medication group experienced relapses, compared to 38 percent of people in the group that was asked to meditate.

Given the encouraging findings, Segal now plans to conduct more in-depth research into the correlation, and is also looking for methods of using the Internet to bring the new therapy to people living outside large cities.