Can meditation cure depression:
Meditation is a term covering a wide variety of ways in which we can work directly or indirectly with our mental states to affect the desired change. It is based on the recognition that with awareness we can to some extent choose how to respond to circumstances. We all have experience of this. You might realize that you are getting impatient and irritable, and decide to relax, letting go physically and emotionally.
Medication may be needed to control severe depression, and medication will certainly be needed for bipolar disorder. Psychotherapy can also be very useful. For extreme depression, meditation should only be used as a complementary practice, although for minor depression meditation can usefully be used alone.
Meditation is not a cure-all, it obviously has applicability to those who suffer from depression since it is connected with learning to move from undesired states (including depression) to more desired states that are more pleasant and fulfilling and allow more normal functioning.
Every person who learns to meditate is a unique individual. Each person works with a unique pattern of conditioning, which affects his or her ability to be able to be aware and to effect change. There are varying internal and external factors that affect our meditation (from ingrained habitual mental states to the effect of our work and our environment), and these are more or less easy to work with.
Meditation is an excellent adjunct to professional support, but if you are experiencing symptoms of severe depression then you should seek help. If depression is a serious problem for you, then you should seek help from a variety of sources, rather from just meditation or any other form of natural therapy for that matter.
The depression may include:
• Feelings of guilt, helplessness and/or hopelessness
• Thoughts of suicide
• Increased isolation
• Missing deadlines or a drop in personal standards
• Change in personality
• Poor concentration
• Inability to experience pleasure
• Anxious worrying and intrusive upsetting thoughts
• Sleep disturbance or inability to fall back to sleep
• Feeling fatigued after 12 hours of sleep