Mental Health Disorders impact 20 to 25% of all people. While meditation is not a cure, medication can help people live creatively and more fully with their diagnosis.
The following is a text version of this blog posting.
The numbers vary from survey to survey. The most commonly accepted estimates are that between 20 and 25% of all people live with some form of mental illness. That’s a lot of people. You may think that you don’t know anyone living with a mental illness. But most people don’t share this information because of social stigma. Today I want to talk about living with mental illness and meditation.
There are anxiety disorders, bipolar affective disorders, and depression (or mood disorders). Those are the three most common diagnoses. Other common diagnoses include dissociative disorders, eating disorders, paranoia, psychosis, schizophrenia, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. At any one time, between 20 and 25% of people are living with one of these mental health challenges. Probably only about 40% of those individuals receive treatment. People are living with a great deal of pain and it’s often not recognized.
Meditation or any other spiritual practice or prayer by themselves aren’t going to solve any of these mental health problems. But meditation can help you live a healthier life even if you have a chronic mental health condition. I’m not just saying that because I’m the spirituality guy. This is based on science.
Let me be very clear: seek proper treatment. For many people, a combination of the right medication and counseling can be helpful. But part of your long-term care should include meditation.
In another video, Two Ways Spirituality Helps Ease Depression, I spoke in more depth about neurochemicals – the chemicals in our brains that carry messages from one cell to another. I’m not going to explain neuroscience in any depth. I’ll just say that one of the things happening with a mental health disorder is that the chemical levels in a person’s brain are out of balance. Those chemicals include serotonin, oxytocin, dopamine, norepinephrine, and GABA. Study after study shows that a regular practice of meditation helps to balance those brain chemicals resulting in simply feeling better.
Here’s the challenge: if you are living with some form of mental illness, the most common instructions people offer about meditation may not work well for you. Sitting in a particular position for 20 minutes may make you very uncomfortable. Or you may feel frustrated because you can’t keep the focus on whatever your meditation teacher told you to focus on. Because of that, there are three keys that I want you to remember when you think about meditation and living with a mental illness.
The first key is that when you are practicing meditation, it’s important to remember that everyone gets distracted. Our thoughts come and go. There are always outside noises. Some days, we’re more distracted than others. The important thing to remember is that a distraction is an opportunity. When we become aware that we are distracted, then we have the opportunity to refocus. If you are following your breathing, using a word or mantra, or focused on an image or candle, whatever it is, just go back to doing that. In time, you’ll say to yourself, “Oh, that’s a distraction. I’ll go back to my technique.” That’s what meditation is for everyone.
The second key is that sitting meditation may not be for you. Many people with some form of anxiety or attention deficit have trouble sitting in one place for any length of time. So, don’t torture yourself. Try walking meditation. The process of walking meditation, which was popularized by Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hahn, is to walk slowly, taking a step with each breath. Some people find walking meditation most helpful when walking a labyrinth. That’s because when walking a labyrinth, which is a circle pattern on the ground, you don’t clearly see where you are going but you follow the path. Some people use what’s called a finger labyrinth, which has the path carved into a wooden board. You breathe slowly and follow the pattern with your finger. These forms of meditation help to engage your body in ways that can be helpful when a mental disorder makes it difficult to simply sit and be still.
The third key is that while most meditation teachers instruct all beginners to start with 20-minute meditation sittings, that may be too long for you. Interestingly, many studies on meditation and cancer ask study participants to meditate for 10 or 12 minutes three times a week. These studies have found positive outcomes for many people with various forms of cancer, cardiac issues, and other physical health challenges. My point is that you should do what you can, don’t do what you can’t. Maybe your starting time is 3 minutes or 5 minutes. Start there. Maybe you want to start with three minutes in the morning and three minutes in the evening. That’s great. As I explained in the video Are You Meditating the Right Way? you need to engage in meditation in a way that’s right for you.
Many meditation teachers just know how to teach their own practice. Most don’t know different approaches. If you are looking to tailor a practice that will be helpful to you, reach out to me in a direct message or email and we can talk about individual instruction as part of spiritual direction.
If you’re living with any form of mental health condition, meditation will be helpful for you. It will help your brain to function more optimally which will enable you to live with your diagnosis in ways that are more positive and creative.