Tag: meditation and depression

First, let me tell you that I was once a typical doctor, not to mention a typical American who loved pizza, soda, birth control, and ibuprofen. I believed in the science that I was taught to believe in. I felt that medication was the answer. And that symptoms were problems that needed to be fixed, suppressed, eradicated. That every patient was just one chemical prescription away from functioning “normally.” It wasn’t until my fellowship specialized in medicating pregnant and breastfeeding women, at a time when I was also pregnant, that I began to feel into a voice inside me that said, “I’m writing prescriptions that no amount of reported ‘safety data’ could convince me to take."

A combination of exercise and meditation done twice a week over two months may reduce depression symptoms by 40 percent, according to a new study published open-access this month in Translational Psychiatry. Following the eight-week intervention, the student participants that had previously been diagnosed with major depressive disorder (MDD) reported significantly less symptoms and ruminative thoughts and students without any such diagnoses also showed remarkable improvements.