Study: Meditation reduces depression symptoms

By Jeannine Stein Los Angeles Time on Sunday April 11, 2010

Medication is not the only way to battle depression. There is a study saying that Transcendental meditation may lessen depression symptoms. In this study there are two different ways depression is being studied. It compares the Transcendental meditation and health education on depression. They have a control group and an experimental group. Transcenental meditation is the experimental group which techniques help people achieve a relaxed state and it is usally done for about 15 tp 20 minutes twice a day. Reasearechers measured depression symptoms at the beginning of the studies and then again three, nine, and twelve months later. They had both males and females of ages fourty and up in both studies. The meditation group had a greater drop in depression then the controled group and the gender had nothing to do with the depression in these groups.

This article deals with chapter 11 (stress and health) and chapter 1(Science of psychology). Meditation is a mental series of exercises meant to refocus attention and achieve a trancelike state of consciousness. This article is useing Transcenental meditation which is a form of meditation. Meditation help with stress and depression. Stress is a term used to describe the physical, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral responses to events. With this form of meditation it helps achieve a relaxing state and that will help with a persons depression. Also in the article it talked about control and experimental groups which we talked about in chapter one. A control group is where a subject in a experiment that are not subjected to the independent variable and receice a placebo treatment. A experimental group is a subject in a experiment that is subjected to the independent varible. This article deals with psychology alot it also talks about depression which we talked about also in chapter 11 for a little bit also with stress. Depression can harm our health so meditation is a good way to reduced depression.