More than 970 million people are diagnosed with anxiety and Depression. Out of the people aged 13 to 24 years were seen to have the highest number of reported cases. But anyone can get this despite their age, gender, ethnical background, etc.
The reason behind these high numbers ranges from academic pressure to the pandemic where people faced the uncertainty of income, the closing of educational institutions, the death of family members and other reasons which contribute to the rise in mental disorders.
What can we do to reduce these numbers? One of the most effective methods is meditation. People who tried meditation reported as much as a 30% reduction in the symptoms of anxiety and depression.
Not just this there are different types of meditation like mindful meditation or chanting Mantra Meditation or meditation where we can use anchor objects like a brass Buddha statue or a beautiful scenery that help you to focus and concentrate during meditation.
In this blog, we will talk about how you can overcome anxiety and depression with the help of meditation.
If you want to know more about this, keep reading.
How Closely Related Are Anxiety And Depression?
Depression and anxiety look like they are very different from each other. But if we look at its root cause then we will find out that they are surprisingly interrelated with each other. Many people have depression and anxiety at the same time.
Let’s talk about them separately to understand them better. Starting with anxiety. Anxiety is the feeling of extreme fearfulness, dread and uneasiness. When a person suffers from anxiety they tend to feel these feelings for a longer time as compared to a normal person.
In depression, as the name suggests the person suffers from depressed mood on a severe level. When a person is depressed, it affects their mood, behaviour, thinking and their day to day activities.
Anxiety and depression can happen to a single person. According to the reports, it is stated that people who have both anxiety and depression are more suicidal compared to people who are diagnosed with depression or anxiety.
In the next section, we will talk about how meditation can help with anxiety and depression.
How Does Meditation Help With Anxiety And Depression?
Depression and anxiety are leading causes of poor mental health as well as suicide, especially for people aged between 19 to 24 years. There are many treatments and programs available to reduce the number of deaths caused by them.
One of the effective solutions to control depression and anxiety is Meditation. It is seen in many studies that people who practice meditation daily have lowered their depression as well as anxiety levels.
- Stops Hyperactivity Of Pre-Frontal Cortex
The medial Pre-frontal cortex is the part of the brain which is responsible for processing information about oneself, this is the part of our brain which thinks about our future, career, love life, and all the other things which are connected to us.
When a person is depressed or anxious then this part of the brain called the medial pre-frontal cortex gets into overdrive and makes us go into overthinking and hence we feel sad and anxious.
According to the study conducted by Dr. John W. Denninger who is the director of research at the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital.
It was seen that the people who regularly meditated had a normal functioning medial as compared to people who did not meditate.
- Control over Negative Thoughts
There are many ways one can benefit from meditation. One of them is being aware of our thought process. When a person is meditating they tend to focus on their breath or a sound to help them concentrate.
When their mind wanders they gently redirect it to meditating but if one is depressed or anxious, it can also help to ponder what exactly is bothering them.
This practice can help in identifying their problem points as well as addressing them with the help of medical help and treatment this can help in improving their mental health.
- Regulate stress hormone
The amygdala is another region which is associated with depression. This region is specifically responsible for Fight or Flight response.
This part of the brain is also called the Fear centre. The problem starts when the brain starts overthinking which activates the medial pre-frontal cortex and it releases the stress hormone.
As the stress hormone is released, the Amygdala responds to these stress hormones and induces fear hormones. All this results in severe fear and flight response along with a hyperactive Medial Pre Frontal Cortex.
So, how does a person handle this situation? In most cases, doctor intervention with proper medical treatment as well as counselling is required. With regular meditation, a person can break this chain of stress and its response. This is why meditation is used to lower stress hormones.
- Controls overthinking
When one suffers from anxiety and depression, it is natural to think endlessly about a lot of things that might not even happen. Yet thinking about things continuously and constantly is termed as overthinking.
Meditation is a practice where a person focuses on their mind and body with the help of different techniques. When a person meditates they focus on themselves and their thinking pattern so they have a better understanding of themselves.
When a person mediates it helps to increase focus and identify the distractions that can cause them to think negatively.
To wrap it up
This blog is about how you can overcome anxiety and depression with the help of mediation. In the beginning, we talked about how anxiety and depression are closely related to each other and how much it can affect one’s life.
Then we headed to the next section, where we talked about how meditation can help you deal with anxiety and depression. In this section, we discussed how regular meditation impacts brain chemistry as well as how depression disputes the balance between different parts of the brain.