OBJECTIVES: The goal of this study was to examine the effectiveness of meditation on depression and anxiety in psychiatric outpatients. METHOD: Meditation group which had taken the meditation and participated in 20 meditation sessions, and control group which had only taken the medication were given Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and State-Trait Anxiety Inventory(STAI) at pre-test and post-test periods. RESULTS: Comparing pre-test score with post-test score, scores of BDI and STAI decreased at a statistically significant level in meditation group. However, scores of control group did not change significantly. CONCLUSION: The results of present study suggest that meditation have positive effects on depression and anxiety in neurotic patients.
Anxiety* ; Depression* ; Humans ; Meditation* ; Outpatients

Stress can increase the risk of various diseases, exacerbate many medical disorders, and change healthy life-style behaviors. Therefore, effective management of stress is essential to decreasevulnerability to illnesses and to improve the quality of life. There is considerable evidence that mindbody interventions such as relaxation, meditation, imaginary technique, cognitivebehavior therapy, and biofeedback can be used as effective adjunctive therapy to conventional medical treatment for a number of medical disorders. The author will introduce the principles of stress management and briefly overview stress management methods and techniques.
Biofeedback, Psychology ; Meditation ; Quality of Life ; Relaxation

OBJECTIVES: This study was to investigate the EEG changes induced by Danhak which is one of the Korean traditional mediation. METHODS: Sixteen meditators and 9 controls were recruited. Spectral analysis and visual inspection of EEG during meditation(meditators) and relaxation(controls) were performed. The absolute power and interhemispheric coherence in earth frequency band were obtained. Ratio of change in absolute power and interhemispheric coherence was calculated to compare the EEG changes between meditators and controls. To evaluate episodic changes of EEG with time, all recorded EEGs were reviewed by visual inspection. RESULTS: Eleven meditators and 4 controls were excluded from the analysis due to drowsiness or poor compliance. Both meditators and controls showed various EEG changes and the degree of variability was more prominent in meditators than in controls. These differences were evident in absolute power of alpha and theta and coherence of beta at frontal, and coherence of theta at occipital. Meditators showed the increase in absolute power of alpha and theta at frontal, and interhemispheric coherence of theta at occipital. In visual inspection, a number of theta bursts were observed in three of 5 meditators and only one theta burst appeared in one control. CONCLUSION: These results suggest that great variability of EEG change and the appearance of theta bursts is the characteristics of EEG changes of meditators and that the state of meditation Is more diverse and dynamic than that of relaxation.
Compliance ; Electroencephalography ; Meditation* ; Negotiating ; Relaxation ; Sleep Stages

Yoga originated in India more than 5,000 years ago and is a means of balancing and harmonizing the body, mind, and emotions. Yoga practice is useful in the management of various lifestyle diseases, including type 2 diabetes. Psycho-neuro-endocrine and immune mechanisms are involved in the beneficial effects of yoga on diabetes. Incorporation of yoga practice in daily life helps to attain glycaemic control and reduces the risk of complications in people with diabetes. In this review, we briefly describe the role of various yoga practices in the management of diabetes based on evidence from various clinical studies.
Diabetes Mellitus ; India ; Life Style ; Meditation ; Yoga*

BACKGROUND: The government staffs studied in this research has been easily exposed to excessive job stress, which can lead to a variety of psychosocial problems and poor quality of life. In this study, we examined the effect of the self reflection meditation program on the psychosocial health and stress responses of government staffs, to suggest the intervention program improving psychosocial health and quality of life in government staffs.METHODS: In this study, we measured the conditions of 36 local government staffs based on self reflection scale, psychosocial health and stress score before and after implementing the short-term intensive meditation program.RESULTS: The results showed that there were significant increase in social role performance and self confidence(p=.003), general health and vitality(p=.019) and significant decrease in stress(p=.010). This change was prominently showed in administrative officer and depression and anxiety(p=.034) also significantly decreased after program.CONCLUSION: Self reflection meditation program was effective in improving the psychosocial health and physical health of government staffs. Therefore, self reflection meditation program could be proposed as program for stress management and promotion of quality of life in government staff.
Depression ; Local Government ; Meditation ; Quality of Life

INTRODUCTION

Burnout is becoming more common among healthcare professionals, notably during the COVID-19 pandemic. It can result in lower performance and effectiveness at work as well as employment withdrawal, all of which affects the standard of healthcare services provided.

In order to ascertain the effectiveness of mindfulness meditation-based interventions (MMBIs) in reducing burnout among healthcare workers, a systematic review and meta-analysis was done.

Two investigators searched records in CENTRAL, PubMed/MEDLINE, Google Scholar, Preprints, Grey Literature, and cross-referencing to acquire articles using search terms related to “mindfulness meditation”, “healthcare workers”, and “burnout”. Inclusion criteria included randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and nonrandomized controlled trials (NRTs) that assessed the effectiveness of MMBIs on burnout as measured by the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) among healthcare workers in the hospital setting. Study selection, data extraction, risk of bias assessment were done by the investigators independently. Analysis was done using RevMan 5 software, forest plots were generated, and subgroup analyses were done.

Of 25,453 identified records, 28 studies were included. The studies were rated with low to unclear selection bias and high risk of performance bias. MMBIs were associated with significant reduction on the emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and personal accomplishment subscales with pooled mean differences of -2.60 (95% CI = -3.64, -1.55), -0.51 (95% CI = -0.77, -0.26), and 0.82 (95% CI = 0.24, 1.39), respectively. On subgroup analyses, the types of MMBI implemented had no influence in the intervention effect noted on all subscales among RCTs but had significant influence among NRTs. Reduction of burnout was noted to be higher in nurses compared with physicians and mixed healthcare workers. Overall quality of evidence for RCTs was low to moderate and very low to low for NRTs.

The results suggest that MMBIs can reduce the burnout symptoms of healthcare workers. To address the high risk of bias of included studies and improve quality of evidence, future research should be done with high-quality RCTs.

There is a considerable body of literature describing the trials of meditation as adjunctive treatment of psychiatry. Although meditation has included various concepts and activity through a long history, meditation used as a therapeutic intervention in psychiatry has usually been accepted as a kind of emotion and attention regulation training. The aim of this article was to review historical origin, clinical effectiveness, and neurobiological mechanism of meditation as treatment for psychiatric disorders. Meditation is originated from various types of religious tradition. In general, meditation is divided by the consciousness meditation and the awareness meditation. Concept of mindfulness-based therapy is mainly based on awareness meditation. In addition to two types of meditation, loving kindness meditation is developed and exercised in compassion-focused therapy. Neurobiological evidence suggests that meditation reduces stress-related autonomic and endocrine change. In addition, research using neuroimaging has provided biological evidence that a specific region of brain activity and connectivity is related to subjective experience of meditation. Clinical trials support the effectiveness of meditation for the treatment of anxiety, depression, and any other stress-related disorders. In the future, profound understanding of the neurobiological mechanism, clinical effectiveness, and side effects of meditation as treatment intervention of for psychiatric disorders would be provided for evidence based meditative practice.
Anxiety ; Brain ; Complementary Therapies ; Consciousness ; Depression ; Love ; Meditation* ; Mindfulness* ; Neuroimaging

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to examine a Korean Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (K-MBSR) program for middle aged women and to verify the program's effectiveness on stress, stress coping style, depression, anger and sleep. METHODS: Fifty-two women aged from 40 to 59 (26 in the experimental group and 26 in the control group) from G city participated in the study. Data were collected from February 13 to April 3, 2013. The experimental group received 8 sessions, scheduled once a week, with each session lasting two and a half hours. Outcome variables included stress, stress coping style, depression, anger, sleep and a physiological measure (EEG). RESULTS: There were significant decreases for stress (t= - 2.14, p=.037), depression (t= - 2.64, p=.011), state trait anger (t= - 3.79, p<.001) in the experimental group compared to the control group. CONCLUSION: The findings in this study indicate that the K-MBSR program is an effective program to decrease stress, depression, and state trait anger in middle aged women.
Anger* ; Depression* ; Female ; Humans ; Meditation ; Middle Aged* ; Mindfulness

Breathing is essential for life and at the same time takes a role as a antidote for stress. In the Orient, it was recognized early that respiration, mind, and body have a relation that is inseparable and therefore proper breathing is so important. However, since the mechanism of therapeutic effect by breathing have not been verified, the treatment has been continued till recent years. From that which originated in the Orient, several techniques in the west have been developed to regulate breathing, and have been applying to the clinical situation and to studies, however scientific studies are still lacking. Recently, relaxed breathing has been used as an efficient strategy for breathing therapy as it has an effect on reducing physiological tension and arousal, and, therefore can be used as a basic technique to control or manage stress. In this study, in order to provide basic information and guidelines for clinical application, which will aid in the application of the theoretical basics of breathing therapy and its technique, a review of the literative was conducted. The findings are as follows: 1. Since proper breathing not only has, physically, the important function in supplying oxygen to the body but also gives a good emotional, or pleasant state of mind, it is the first step in controlling physical and mental health. 2. The basic types of breathing can be classified into two types; 'diaphragmatic breathing(relaxed breathing)' and 'chest breathing(stress breathing)'. In yoga type breathing, there are four kinds of breathing, 'upper breathing', 'mid breathing', 'down breathing', and 'complete breathing'. 3. The theoretical explanation of the positive thera peutic effect of breathing therapy techniques exemplifies good brain function, sufficient air flow through the nasal passages, diaphragmatic movement, light vagal stimulation, CO2 changes and cognitive diversion but in most studies, the hypothesis of CO2 is supported. 4. The technique of breathing is designated with many names according to the muscles and techniques used for breathing, and for control of stress, diaphragmatic breathing(relaxed breathing) is explained as a basic technique best used to manage of stress. 5. The relaxed-breathing includes slow diaphragmatic breathing, breath meditation, nasal breathing, yogic abdominal breathing, Benson's relaxed response, and quiet response.
Arousal ; Brain ; Meditation ; Mental Health ; Muscles ; Oxygen ; Respiration* ; Yoga

Beyond the target of scientific researches, meditation is now one of the main tools for palliative and integrative medicine in Western society. Despite theof valuable heritages of meditation in Korea, meditation is not considered to have clinical implications as in Western medical society. It is partly due to the fact that while the mysterious aspect of meditation has been emphasized, a large number of scientific researches on meditation had not been known to Korean medical society. The authors reviewed several studies that examined the clinical effect of meditation and speculated its possibility as a method of clinical intervention.
Integrative Medicine ; Korea ; Meditation* ; Palliative Care ; Societies, Medical