My grandma used to call it “transcendal medication.” She proved to have vision.
There is research just out on Transcendental Meditation being shown to reduce depression.
Some 40% of the populace is said to get depressed. Guesstimates vary. Anyway its major news. Particularly in the trail of a recent Newsweek article: the depressing news about antidepressants. Its actually worth a read.
The bottom line is that the placebo effect may account for the majority of any improvement noted from antidepressants.
So if I was contemplating antidepressants at the moment I’d do some reading first.
What is depression? And where to get help? There are heaps of web resources about.
Any down patch that lasts more than a fortnight might be diagnosable as depression. And its significant; but the good news is that treatable. Its normal to feel downcast, moody or low from time to time. But if you experience these feelings intensely, over a very long time and without reason perhaps you better handle it. Its tough to function normally when you are depressed. And there’s worse to come:, neuroscientists even talk of long term brain damage.
According to Beyondblue.org, depression is a typical mental health problem, experienced by one-in-five folks at some stage of their lives.
Common behaviours linked with depression include:
• unusual moodiness ? increased irritability and frustration ? finding it dificult to take minor personal criticisms ? spending less time with friends and family ? loss of interest in food, sex, exercise or other enjoyable activities ? being awake through the night ? increased alcohol and drug use ? staying home from work or school ? increased physical health complaints like fatigue or pain ? being reckless or taking unnecessary risks (like driving fast or dangerously) ? slowing down of thoughts and actions.
Most people say that depression is caused by current personal problems. Beyondblue says depression is often causednonetheless, by the mixture of contemporary events and other long term or personal risk factors.
Allegedly, ongoing difficulties, eg long term unemployment or living in a violent or uncaring relationship, are much more likely to cause depression than fresh life stressors. Depression can also run in families and some individuals will be at increased genetic risk. However , this doesn’t suggest that you are going to automatically suffer depression if a parent or close relative has had the sickness. Life circumstances are still likely to have a vital influence on your chances of becoming ill.
It’s also common for folk to experience depression and anxiety at the same time. Now, it might certainly follow that anything that reduced anxiety would help depression? And that is what we find with meditation. There are such a lot of studies out there on the favorable results of meditation generally and TM in particular on anxiety, that there are meta-analyses, i.e. Studies of studies on the matter. And Transcendental Meditation seems to be the big one, producing a noticeably bigger anxiety reduction than other methodologies. For example, search for a meta analysis by Ken Eppley.
My position is that I learned the TM technique and depression went away for approximately thirty years. That is not such a terrible outcome at all. And may partly explain why I am so enthusiastic about transcendental meditation. At the very least there aren’t any side effects. Read and inform yourself here how TM will help you improve your physical and mental health.
Doctor Richard Broome and his wife Vicki run the Houghton TM Centre in Johannesburg. He’s got a Doctorate in Business Administration from the University of Cape Town. His dissertation was on stress reduction at the worksite using Transcendental Meditation.