Transcendental meditation can help cure depression

LONDON - A new study has revealed that transcendental meditation can successfully be used to treat depression.

The research led by University of California Los Angeles has shown that depressive symptoms almost halved among those who used the therapy over 12 months.

The advocates believe that the meditation reduces stress and increases feelings of calm, sometimes described as inner peace.

Even patients at risk of depression who had not developed the illness saw benefits. During the study, researchers followed 36 patients with clinical depression, while another, by the University of Hawaii, looked at 112 patients at risk of heart disease, who were also at high risk of suffering from depression.

“These results are encouraging and provide support for testing the efficacy of Transcendental Meditation in the treatment of clinical depression,” telegraph.co.uk quoted Hector Myers, the co-author of one of the studies and professor and director of Clinical Training in the Department of Psychology at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), as saying.

Both studies compared the groups with healthy people who were also asked to perform Transcendental Medication over the course of a year. They show that patients experienced the benefits of meditation rapidly.

The findings revealed that those with depression reported that their symptoms had nearly halved within three months of starting the treatment, and the effects were maintained across the rest of the year-long study.

Similarly, in the patients at risk of developing heart disease, the full benefits were seen within three months, over the course of which time depressive symptoms fell by around a third.