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Researchers at University College London (UCL) in the United Kingdom, Witten/Herdecke University in Germany, and the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia obtained these results using an international online questionnaire of 1,232 people who had been meditating for at least 2 months.
On the questionnaire, they asked the participants, “Have you ever had any particularly unpleasant experiences (e.g., anxiety, fear, distorted emotions or thoughts, altered sense of self or the world), which you think may have been caused by your meditation practice?”
A few additional questions and qualifiers determined how long the participants had been meditating and how often they meditate. Each participant also reported whether they had ever attended a meditation retreat and what type of meditation they practice.
A few specific results stood out when the team analyzed the data. More males (28.5%) than females (23.0%) reported a negative experience, and people without a religious belief were more likely to report a negative experience in comparison with those who were religious (30.6% versus 22.0%).
Additionally, the participants who had been on a meditation retreat were more likely to have had a bad experience than those who had never participated in one (29.0% compared with 19.6%). Lead author Marco Schlosser, from the UCL Division of Psychiatry, notes that as scientists do not yet know much about meditation-related difficulties, it is important to conduct further research to understand these issues better.
The medical community considers meditation to be safe for most people, but it is important that those with physical health conditions speak with a healthcare professional before starting this practice. Also, although there has been evidence that meditation can improve anxiety and depression, a few reports have concluded that meditation can actually worsen these conditions — a finding that correlates with this latest study.