Debate: Can mindfulness and meditation be harmful?

Yes (in per­haps 8% of indi­vid­u­als). Can mind­ful­ness and med­i­ta­tion be harm­ful? (Sci­ence Focus):

Med­i­ta­tion has escaped both the reli­gious cells of monks and nuns and the labs of sci­en­tists. An increas­ing num­ber of peo­ple are using med­i­ta­tion apps to deal with men­tal health prob­lems, such as depres­sion and anx­i­ety. Although there is no clear esti­mate of how many peo­ple are prac­tis­ing med­i­ta­tion, last year one sin­gle app had close to 40 mil­lion downloads.

But now my new study, which reviews over 40 years of the sci­ence of med­i­ta­tion and mind­ful­ness-based ther­a­pies, sug­gests that these prac­tices can also lead to neg­a­tive effects in about 8 per cent of indi­vid­u­als — from increas­es in anx­i­ety, depres­sion and stress, to unusu­al expe­ri­ences like hallucinations.

This sounds coun­ter­in­tu­itive, giv­en the thou­sands of sci­en­tif­ic stud­ies explor­ing the pos­i­tive effects of med­i­ta­tion. But this study also indi­cates that sci­en­tists have been aware of these prob­lems for a long time … We hope our study will moti­vate sci­en­tists to seek a more bal­anced under­stand­ing of when, for whom, and under what cir­cum­stances med­i­ta­tion can be ben­e­fi­cial, or harm­ful, and it will pres­sure com­mer­cial meditation/mindfulness apps and course providers to raise their eth­i­cal stan­dards – at the very least, they should be oblig­ed to inform the pub­lic that med­i­ta­tion is not a panacea, it doesn’t work for every­one, and it may pro­duce neg­a­tive effects.

No (at least when we talk about wide­ly avail­able pro­grams and com­pare inter­ven­tion vs. con­trol group rates…but we need to bet­ter define “harm”). Research Sug­gests Com­mon Mind­ful­ness Pro­gram Unlike­ly to Cause Harm (Cen­ter for Healthy Minds at U Wisconsin-Madison):

Poten­tial side effects are often front and cen­ter when con­sid­er­ing tak­ing med­i­cine for phys­i­cal or men­tal con­di­tions, but infor­ma­tion is less clear with treat­ments like med­i­ta­tion that don’t come in pill form.

Pop­u­lar media and case stud­ies have recent­ly high­light­ed neg­a­tive side effects from meditation—increases in depres­sion, anx­i­ety, and even psy­chosis or mania—but few stud­ies have looked at the issue in depth across large num­bers of people.

In a recent paper fea­tured in the jour­nal Psy­cho­log­i­cal Med­i­cine, researchers at the Cen­ter for Healthy Minds at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wisconsin–Madison found that peo­ple who took part in the most com­mon and wide­ly avail­able sec­u­lar mind­ful­ness pro­gram did not expe­ri­ence psy­cho­log­i­cal harm at a rate high­er than peo­ple in con­trol groups who did not take part in the program…

Anoth­er ques­tion to explore fur­ther is the sub­jec­tive inter­pre­ta­tion of harm. In some med­i­ta­tion tra­di­tions, tem­po­rary dis­com­fort, neg­a­tive thoughts and unusu­al somat­ic expe­ri­ences might be indica­tive of progress in one’s prac­tice. “The dis­tinc­tion is not always made clear enough when we hear about cas­es of harm,” says Hir­sh­berg. “Med­i­ta­tion prac­tice means many dif­fer­ent things, from inten­sive med­i­ta­tion retreats for months or even years to 10 min­utes of dai­ly prac­tice at home. Most report­ed cas­es of harm are relat­ed to more inten­sive prac­tice. They are real­ly dif­fer­ent cat­e­gories. We can’t infer about harm in inten­sive prac­tice from these find­ings and sim­i­lar­ly, we can­not infer about poten­tial harm in MBSR or sim­i­lar pro­grams from harm fol­low­ing inten­sive practice.”

What’s your take?

The Debate in Context:

• Med­i­ta­tion apps have gone main­stream in the covid-19 era
• Sev­en evi­dence-based rea­sons to start med­i­tat­ing yesterday
• Six tips to build resilience and pre­vent brain-dam­ag­ing stress
• Study: Med­i­ta­tion prac­tice, both for­mal and infor­mal, helps devel­op equa­nim­i­ty over time
• Three ways to pro­tect your men­tal health dur­ing –and after– COVID-19