Washington, D.C, US: The first research to ever evaluate anxiety treatment options directly between medicine and meditation has discovered that both techniques are equally effective at easing symptoms.
The study, which was released recently in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, implies that individuals who struggle with anxiety may benefit from either a daily medication or a daily mindfulness exercise.
Dr. Elizabeth Hoge, Head of the Anxiety Disorders Research Program and Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, D.C., is the study’s lead author.
For both treatments, we had folks who said, ‘This really worked’.
Dr. Hoge shared
According to the Anxiety & Depression Association of America, 6.8 million adults in the United States have a generalized anxiety disorder, yet less than half of them receive treatment. 276 individuals with generalized anxiety disorder were involved in the two-month research. The other half took part in a mindfulness-based stress reduction program while the other half received escitalopram, a popular antidepressant.
With a 20 percent decrease in symptoms at the end of the research, both groups reported modest improvements despite their treatment. Dr. Craig Sawchuk, a Psychologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, who was not involved in the new research, stated that this kind of improvement is consistent with past trials of drugs to treat anxiety.
Almost 80 percent of participants who took the antidepressant reported experiencing at least one adverse effect, such as difficulty sleeping, nausea, headaches, decreased libido, and elevated anxiety. Most were thought to be minor. In the mindfulness group, only one side effect, increased anxiety was mentioned by around 15 percent of the individuals.
The mindfulness program, however, took a lot of time because participants had to spend one full day at a meditation retreat in addition to two one and half hour group lessons twice a week for eight weeks. Additionally, students were instructed to meditate for 45 minutes every day during the duration of the study.