Mindfulness as effective as drugs at treating anxiety

Bruce Banner Known for his inability to control his emotions.It’s like all his deals, but in 2008 Incredible Hulk, he really tries to control his feelings. We see him step away from his former life and start meditating and yoga. As a result, he hasn’t had a Hulk-like outburst in his five months. There are many things about the Marvel universe that are hard to believe, but this isn’t one of them.

For centuries, cultures around the world have understood the benefits of mindfulness and meditation. There is now a growing body of scientific literature supporting this practice.In his July of this year, the scientist Mindfulness training for physical pain relief In human patients, new research suggests it may be just as good at dealing with emotional pain. It was published in the magazine JAMA Psychiatryused mindfulness as an alternative treatment for anxiety disorders.

Researchers recruited 430 study participants, including 276 adults diagnosed with anxiety disorders, of whom 208 completed the study. Participants underwent a blinded assessment at the beginning of the study, completed the active part of the study after 8 weeks, and had follow-up assessments at 12 and 24 weeks. The idea was to assess how well mindfulness practices reduced anxiety symptoms and how much they did compared to conventional medication.

Participants were divided into two roughly one-to-one groups. One group received escitalopram, commonly known as Lexapro, dosed flexibly between 10 and 20 milligrams depending on the person. The second group completed a mindfulness-based stress reduction course. did. This course included his two and a half hour classes once a week and his 45 minutes of daily practice at home. In these sessions, participants learn to pay attention to their bodies and focus on what is happening in the moment rather than what might happen in the future. When intrusive thoughts appear, they are trained to easily recognize them and then put them aside. It is believed to help train a person to detach themselves from their emotional states and control their emotions.

Both groups underwent a full battery of assessments and assessed their anxiety levels using the Clinical Global Impression of Severity scale. During the baseline assessment, before the intervention was administered, his CGI-S score in the mindfulness group was 4.44, while his score in the drug group was 4.51. For reference, a score of 1 indicates no illness at all, A score of 7 indicates severe illnessBoth groups hovered around 4.5 years between ‘moderately ill’ and ‘severely ill’. This was not surprising, as groups were randomly selected and should have scores approximately the same as before the intervention. The question was whether mindfulness could tolerate medication in reducing anxiety levels.

After 8 weeks, participants were evaluated a second time and scores in both groups jumped relative to baseline. The mindfulness group averaged his 1.35 lower score, and the drug group his CGI-S score averaged 1.43 lower. As a result, the mindfulness and drug groups scored on average 3.09 and 3.08, respectively, slightly above “mild” on the CGI-S scale. In short, mindfulness has been found to be as effective as frontline medications for treating anxiety.

In addition, 10 patients who started treatment dropped out of the drug group because of side effects, whereas the mindfulness patients did not drop out. This is the first head-to-head comparison of mindfulness and drugs and supports the discussion of mindfulness and meditation as alternative or add-on therapies for anxiety disorders.

Full disclosure: Some mindfulness patients reported an increase in anxiety despite an overall decrease. As with most treatments for mental illness, your mileage will vary. Also keep in mind that not everyone has access or bandwidth for hours of weekly mental health interventions. We have no data on whether it extends to fullness. Spend time with yourself today Mindfulness might be right for you.