Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics: A 10% Happier How-To Book

by Dan Harris

That said, both Jeff and I have suffered from mild bouts of depression and/or anxiety, and we have found meditation to be enormously useful, often in conjunction with traditional psychotherapy. In my own experience, when the fog of gloom descends, meditation helps me step off the hamster wheel of obsessive thought, so that I don’t get so caught up in the stories barfed up by the voice in my head. In fact, research appears to back this up, suggesting that meditation can be beneficial for depression and anxiety. The Journal of the American Medical Association published a study led by the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine that found daily mindfulness-based meditation was roughly as effective as antidepressants in providing relief from some symptoms.