Meditation for Anxiety, Depression, and Pain

An abstract of a study by Goyal et al determining whether certain types of meditation, such as mindfulness meditation, may provide health benefits. The authors conclude that mindfulness meditation programs may help decrease anxiety, depression, and pain in certain populations; therefore, providers should discuss the modality with patients. They note that, although the analysis benefited from its use of randomized controlled trials, there were significant limitations to the research, including a lack of strong evidence supporting the conclusions and problems with the studies included in the analysis (such as nonstandardized training or key design characteristics not being reported).