Can meditation help treat ADD, OCD, and depression?
A recent study by Emory University neuroscientists suggests that Zen Buddhist meditation may help treat depression, attention deficit disorder, and anxiety, reports The Kansas City Star.
Obsessive-compulsive disorder and depression are characterized in part by “excessive rumination” or runaway thoughts, said Giuseppe Pagnoni, a neuroscientist at Emory in Atlanta.
Zen meditation can help patients avoid distracting or harmful preoccupations, Pagnoni said. His paper, “Thinking About Not-Thinking: Neural Correlates of Conceptual Processing During Zen Meditation,” was published in September by PLoS ONE ( www.plosone.org).
But Mark Epstein, author of Psychotherapy without the Self: A Buddhist Perspective, said “the more entrenched the condition is — like severe OCD or major depression — the less helpful meditation will be. We should not talk about meditation as a panacea for all that stuff because it’s just setting people up for disappointment.”
What do you think? Has meditation alone helped you or a loved one? If not, what else was needed to treat OCD, ADD, or depression?
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Comments
I totally agree with Mark Epstein. As someone who has suffered from anxiety disorder and OCD since adolescence (I'm now in my 40s), meditation is just one of many things I have used to help me. I have been on anti-depressants for 11 years and off and on cognitive therapy for about 20 years. Yoga and meditation are welcome additions but have never been enough (before taking medication or during). Epstein is so right, any claims that meditation (or yoga) can "cure" depression, anxiety, OCD, ADD,etc are gross exaggerations. There are a myriad numbers of reasons for these conditions - genes, environment, trauma, abuse and/or a combination of some or all of these reasons. I find it frustrating when I hear yogis, alternative health practitioners, new agers, gurus,et al try to say that they know how to solve such complex problems.
namaste,
tara
Posted by: Tara | October 11, 2008 07:26 PM
The mind is a powerful tool. If you believe it will help you, it probably will help you because meditation is a great way to clear your mind of negativity and escape from the worries of everyday life if you really get in to it. If you don't believe it will help you, meditation will just feel like sitting on the ground for 45 minutes, and you will probably never let yourself get to the state of mind where it really would be able to help you. As someone who has been depressed in the past, I know that yoga and meditation are great ways to feel like you can change your life. They renew hope, energy and vigor.
Posted by: Stephanie | October 12, 2008 06:36 PM
Has meditation alone helped you or a loved one? If not, what else was needed to treat OCD, ADD, or depression?
An honest answer? Well, as I am familiar with TM and Zen, I have to admit that regularity is the main point. I can have, caused by unemployment and few social contacts, a "hermit reaction": days and weeks of depression and find out that meditation alone doesn't help me. That I even avoid for weeks to meditate. And then suddenly, the sun in my mind shines again, without being able to pinpoint the origin of this change. It must be the biorhythm in all of us. Either you take pills, or you meditate (for me not equal to contemplate), it all starts with the simple belief that it will work. Belief is a queer thing and I don't mean sth. about gods, probably sth. religious, but then only in the sense of relating to everyone and everything else. And the second most important element at the start is: keep your own environment and your body clean. Yoga is all about purification of the Self and this starts with a shower and a swim.
Posted by: Robin | October 13, 2008 02:06 AM