A new study suggests that meditation may only provide mild relief from pain, depression, and anxiety but it does not really help in other issues such as eating problems, sleep problems, and weight management.
Researchers from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore led by assistant professor of general internal medicine Madhav Goyal did a meta-research of 47 existing studies and randomized clinical trials. The study covered 3, 515 participants. The purpose of the study was to guide doctors in counselling their patients about the possible help that meditation can do.
The participants of the study were prescribed mindfulness meditation and mantra meditation. Mindfulness meditation's key element is the present-focuses awareness while mantra meditation is a type of mediation wherein the patient is asked to say a phrase repeatedly.
Results of the research showed that only patients who performed mindfulness mediation were able to report some benefits. In an example, a patient suffering from depression showed improvements similar to patients who were prescribed with antidepressants. However, the researchers also noted that only a few used mantra meditation which may account to lack of evidence for the benefits derived from this type of meditation.
Allan H. Groll, a professor of medicine at the Harvard Medical School-Massachusetts General Hospital who was not part of the study, commented that meditation is less effective in helping patients with stress-related problems.
"The studies overall failed to show much benefit from meditation with regard to relief of suffering or improvement in overall health, with the important exception that mindfulness meditation provided a small but possibly meaningful degree of relief from psychological distress," Prof.Groll told Wall Street Journal.
Dr. Groll also noted that the participants in the study were only given 30-40 hours of meditation, theorizing that perhaps "meditation is a skill that takes time to master." He also stated that there is a need for more evidence to be able to come up with more conclusions about the benefits of meditation.
The study was published on the January 6 issue of JAMA Internal Medicine.
