From the Tricycle article:
This finding was included in “Prevalence of meditation-related adverse effects in a population-based sample in the United States,” which was published in June 2021. The study’s authors conducted what they believe to be the first population-based survey of the adverse effects of meditation (participants, it should be noted, practiced mindfulness, mantra, and spiritual meditation, not explicitly Buddhist meditation). Findings suggest that 10.6 percent of the nearly 1,000 people surveyed reported that they had “functional impairment” for a period of time (ranging from less than a day to more than a month). The most common adverse effects were anxiety, traumatic re-experiencing, and emotional sensitivity, according to the authors, who also found that people with childhood trauma were more likely to experience adverse effects.
“We saw some evidence that those who were first exposed to meditation through a smartphone app were more likely to experience impairment from meditation.
Goldberg said findings did not indicate that using apps in general were associated with adverse effects, just being first exposed by an app. He stressed that it was a small number of participants (17) first exposed via an app, but that the finding persisted when controlled for demographics. “I will feel more confident in this finding when someone else replicates it, ideally in a larger sample,” Goldberg added.
17 people! Good lord. Why is Tricycle even publishing this.
(Not to in any way diminish the suffering of the affected people. Just saying that it’s a small number compared to the “nearly 1000 people” surveyed.)
Goldberg, the lead author, said that he’s involved in two recent randomized control trials to test the Healthy Minds Program app in people with limited meditation background. “In both studies, we found that those assigned to the meditation app group were less likely to experience clinically significant increases in psychological distress. To me, these kinds of randomized trials are much stronger tests of the safety of meditation apps than cross-sectional studies,” Goldberg said.
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