psychosis: With reason versus madness
Meditation technique may not only alleviate depression and anxiety, but also symptoms of psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia. However, there are some things to consider.
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Mindfulness exercises are about noticing your thoughts and feelings, but not judging them. This can relieve stress – and symptoms of various mental illnesses.
Mindfulness exercises have had a steep run in psychotherapy in recent decades — especially when it comes to dealing with stress, anxiety, or depression. However, their field of application is not limited to this. People with a psychotic disorder such as schizophrenia also benefit from Far Eastern-inspired meditation techniques. This is the conclusion New review paper.
Psychologist Lynn Ellett from the University of Southampton summarized ten studies from 2013 to 2023, and each of them were meta-analyses, that is, summaries of previously published studies. They all examined the use of mindfulness in treating patients with psychosis and measured its effect on delusions and other psychotic symptoms.
In mindfulness meditation, you learn, among other things, to observe and become aware of your thoughts and feelings, but not to evaluate or respond to them. The duration of the interventions ranged between 4 and 26 sessions in the original studies. As a rule, exercises were taught in a group, but sometimes individually. Although mindfulness has been the focus, it has rarely been used as a sole treatment, but rather combined with components of cognitive behavioral therapy or schema therapy.
The supposedly gentle form of treatment reduced the severity of psychotic symptoms in the vast majority of meta-analyses examined. Mindfulness also helped overcome so-called negative symptoms, including lack of joy and other strong emotions, decreased motivation and disturbances in thinking and motor skills.
However, in order to be used against delusions and the like, mindfulness-based therapies must be adapted in some ways, Ellett wrote. For patients with psychosis, it is recommended to exercise for a shorter duration, usually ten minutes. Instructions given more frequently than usual are intended to avoid long periods of silence. This aims to prevent those affected from falling into rumination of psychotic experiences. It should also be noted that psychotic thoughts and experiences should be viewed as just as normal as others – and should not be reacted to. This can make it seem less threatening and stressful.
However, there are still questions that need to be answered, such as how effective mindfulness exercises performed at home are for treating psychosis. In addition, more research needs to be done to determine how often these interventions can cause harm or be counterproductive for people with psychosis, Ellett says.
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