A study published in JAMA Psychiatry earlier this month concluded that mindfulness meditation is as effective as standard prescription drugs used to treat anxiety.
Mindfulness is a type of meditation that focuses on the present moment. Essentially, the goal is to block out intrusive thoughts, clearing the mind to attain a relaxed state.
To achieve this state, intentional breathing techniques are often leveraged, as well as so-called “body scans,” forcing the mind to identify each part from head to toe. The goal is to acknowledge any intrusive thoughts briefly but ultimately dismiss them.
About half the subjects in the six-month study were randomly assigned to use a popular mindfulness program, which consisted of 2.5 hours of weekly classes and 45 minutes of at-home practice. The remaining subjects were prescribed a generic anxiety and depression drug to use during the study.
Participants used a scale ranging from 1 through 7 to measure their anxiety, with 7 representing the most severe form. The average assessed anxiety level for the subjects at the beginning of the experiment was 4.5.
Two months later, the score for both groups dropped to 3. Further drops in the score continued to occur in subsequent months, albeit with more modest reductions.
Ultimately, the authors of the study discovered that – whether using medication or meditation – both groups experienced a 30% decrease in symptoms after four months.
Anxiety is a broad term covering numerous disorders, including panic attacks. These disorders afflict a substantial proportion of the population. In the U.S., 25% of men suffer from anxiety at some point in their life. For women, it’s much higher, with four out of ten affected.
While experts have long known that mindfulness meditation can be a useful tool to treat anxiety, this was the first randomized clinical trial to actually compare the effectiveness of meditation to the effectiveness of the commonly prescribed antidepressant drug escitalopram.
The relative benefits of meditation may be even more pronounced given the potential risk of side effects from potent pharmaceuticals. In fact, despite a relatively small group of participants, ten of the study’s 106 subjects who were administered drugs to treat anxiety were forced to drop out early due to troubling side effects, like nausea.
Though none of the 102 participants engaging in mindfulness dropped out of the study, 13 of them did report higher levels of anxiety.
The findings confirm just “how useful mindfulness can be when practiced effectively,’’ according to Sheehan Fisher, psychologist and associate professor at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine.
Dr. Scott Krakower, a psychiatrist at Zucker Hillside Hospital in New York, believes mindfulness is best reserved for those individuals with mild anxiety, while severe forms often require pharmaceutical intervention. According to the doctor, the time it takes to meditate frequently is also a consideration for some patients. Krakower was not associated with the study.
For Olga Cannistraro, mindfulness practice is worth it. At 52, she’s never taken prescription medication for her anxiety disorder. After joining a previous mindfulness study, she’s learned to suppress symptoms with meditation and “to intervene in my own state of mind.” Now, the freelance writer from Keene, New Hampshire, says even the simple act of acknowledging anxiety can help reduce its severity.
