Study: Meditation worked just as well as drug to treat anxiety
Mindfulness meditation worked as well as a standard drug for treating anxiety in the first head-tohead comparison.
The study tested a widely used mindfulness program that includes 2 ½ hours of classes weekly and 45 minutes of daily practice at home. Participants were randomly assigned to the program or daily use of a generic drug sold under the brand name Lexapro for depression and anxiety.
After two months, anxiety declined by about 30% in both groups and continued to decrease during the following four months.
Study results, published recently in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, are timely. In September, a U.S. health task force recommended routine anxiety screening for adults, and numerous reports suggest global anxiety rates have increased, related to worries over the pandemic, political and racial unrest, climate change and financial uncertainties.
Anxiety disorders include social anxiety, generalized anxiety and panic attacks. Affected people are troubled by persistent and intrusive worries that interfere with their lives and relationships. In the U.S., anxiety disorders affect 40% of U.S. women at some point in their lives and more than 1 in 4 men, according to data cited in U.S. Preventive Services Task Force screening recommendations.
Mindfulness is a form of meditation that emphasizes focusing on what’s happening at the moment and dismissing intrusive thoughts. Sessions often start with breathing exercises. Next might be “body scans” — thinking about each body part systematically, head to toe. When worried thoughts intrude, participants learn to acknowledge and then dismiss them.
Instead of ruminating over the troubling thought, “You say, ‘I’m having this thought, let that go for now,’ ” said lead author Elizabeth Hoge, director of Georgetown University’s Anxiety Disorders Research Program. With practice, “It changes the relationship people have with their own thoughts when not meditating.”
The results were based on a six-month study involving about 200 adults.