Anxiety and meditation

A new meta-analysis has found meditation has a large effect on reducing trait anxiety for people with high anxiety. Trait anxiety is a measure of how anxious a person usually is, as opposed to state anxiety, which refers to how anxious we are at the moment. A meta-analysis is an objective means to draw conclusions from all the research in a field. This meta-analysis covered 16 randomized controlled trials, the gold standard in medical research, and included 1,295 subjects from various walks of life, age groups, and life situations. Meditation was compared with various control groups, including treatment-as-usual, individual and group psychotherapy, and various relaxation techniques. Studies on high stress groups, such as veterans suffering from PTSD and prison inmates, showed dramatic reductions in anxiety from meditation, whereas studies of groups with only moderately elevated anxiety levels, such as normal adults and college students, showed more modest changes. Individuals with anxiety levels in the 90th percentile (higher than 90% of the rest of the adult population) showed dramatic reductions in anxiety down to the 57th percentile from meditation. This is just a little higher than the average anxiety level, which is the 50th percentile. Study groups that started in the 60th percentile, a little above average, showed more modest reductions, to the 48th percentile, a little below average. Meditation was also found to produce significant improvements in other areas worsened by anxiety, such as blood pressure, insomnia, emotional numbness, family problems, employment status, and drug and alcohol abuse.