Comment by Simp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Simp | Hacker News Reader

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More information to satisfy the complaints of my critics regarding the date, definitions, forms of meditation, etc:

A systematic study on the efficacy of various forms of meditation programs (inc mantra, transcendental, and mindfulness meditation), commissioned by the US Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, was published in 2014.[67] After a review of 17,801 citations, the study based its conclusions on 41 randomized controlled trials with an active control, involving 2,993 participants. The assessment found "no effect or insufficient evidence of any effect of meditation programs on positive mood, attention, substance use, eating habits, sleep, and weight."

Study: http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=18097...

Amazingly, you have cherry-picked the part of your source that agrees with you.

This is the full quote, including the bits you left you:

"Mindfulness meditation programs had moderate evidence of improved anxiety... depression... and pain... and low evidence of improved stress/distress and mental health–related quality of life. We found low evidence of no effect or insufficient evidence of any effect of meditation programs on positive mood, attention, substance use, eating habits, sleep, and weight."

The same source goes on to conclude,

"Clinicians should be aware that meditation programs can result in small to moderate reductions of multiple negative dimensions of psychological stress"

In other words, the same reductions as a placebo would give.

You should be aware that the "CSM Mantra" (?) and "TM" meditation are very fringe forms. When most people say "start meditating" they're generally not referring to those. I personally consider TM to be neutral-to-harmful and I've never heard of this CSM Mantra until just now.

Mindfulness meditation, which is the only form tied to the 2,500 years of Buddhist meditation tradition, did ok.

Interesting is the graph of the results where you see the mindfulness meditation fared better than the "mantra" meditations pretty much across the board (even though most of it wasn't statistically significant.)

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