SuttaCentral
Hey everyone,
was wondering if there were any go to resources for serious meditators with mental illnesses that help navigate practice. Specifically about understanding sensations and thoughts that arise if possible - though i would be interested to read any information in the area.
Hi Sean,
The field of psychology/neuropsychology hasnāt really paid much attention to the wonders of what Buddhism and meditation can do unfortunately. At least not yet! Because the field of psychology and neuropsychology is vast and broad and complex, it would be extremely useful to narrow down the research knowing a specific mental health disorder? Of course itās private and you donāt have to disclose anything.
I cannot however answer for the other way around and perhaps Buddhism has the tools youāre looking for.
As a person diagnosed with a severe mental illness, Iāll say; Take notice, but donāt believe that you are your analyse. And people who have never had to struggle yet give too often unhelpful advice, like; Listen to your doctor and take your medication 
People who donāt get sick of a profoundly unhealthy society are maybe beyond rescue.
It took me about three years to heal, and Iām deeply grateful for these available wisdom teachings of today.
Great question. Psychology and counselling has had a growing interst in mindfulness over the past 40 years. It started mainly with Jon Kabbat-Zinnās creation of a Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program. This program was tested and demonstrated to reduce stress. A lot of programs are coming out of this work. But this work demonstrated stress reduction through specific mindfulness techniques - to my knowledge a lot of the use of mindfulness in counselling has less evidence behind it.
You also have modalities - like Acceptance Commitment Therapy (ACT) - that make significant use of mindfulness. So mindfulness has been combined with other techniques to create approaches to helping a client.
What I havenāt come across are what you are asking for (research how meditation works with a range of mental illnesses) and clear cautions on when certain meditation practices are contra-indicated. For instance, there is a lot of anecdotal evidence that meditation can be harmful for people with PTSD, but Iām not aware of a rigorous study on this. There is some evidence that meditation can trigger/increase depression. But - to my knowledge - based on smaller studies. Surprisingly, meditating more than 30 minutes a day has been found to interfere with sleep for many people.
But all those warnings are under-studied and suggestive, not conclusive, as far as I know. And it seems that many of the problems arise when people go to intensive, non-monastic meditation retreats that they arenāt ready for. So Iām not sure how well the different variables that could be causing adverse reactions have been teased out.
Good luck on your search! I would love to find the resources you are looking for.
With Metta.
For what itās worth, CBT and DBT have some overlap with Buddhist advice on how to deal with hindrances, and the āskillsā presented in workbooks are often more specific and better suited for dealing with those extreme bundles of harmful views and negative emotion you often get with conditions categorized as mental illness.
Iāll believe that in a heartbeat! Meditation, even rid of its Buddhist context, can get samvega going. When people shake themselves out of their rut and take an honest look at things, theyāre bound to get a glimpse of the three characteristics, and that might just be enough. Now, combine samvega with a materialist view of the universe, i.e. existential nihilism, which has become the norm in the West; combine it with the usual lack of moral direction and the rapid decline of the natural and political world, and no way to do anything about that buffet of awfulness that is life in a human body (and all the variously dysfunctional human communities) except manage the symptoms, and youāre likely to get anxiety and depression out of it.
It might just be irresponsible to get people into meditation as some self-improvement or mental health scheme and leave out all the rest of the path - if the goal is to be a bit less stressed, relaxation exercises can do that without the possible side effects.
This is a really important point. The root of much mental distress and illness is systemic, not personal.
When I take a look at society I see a being that is basically in a state of phsycosis, and driven further into madness with solutions made by solely using left brain hemisphere mechanical logical thinking and feeling.
Organised religions canāt help us, market forces wonāt, and our politicians are corrupt.
thank you everyone for your responses. the clinical stuff is interesting but as mentioned by others its not very deep in the field. how about personal accounts from say monastics or established practioners with mental illnesses? i think it would be hard to scientifically conclude an answer to the types of questions im interested in right now.
Hi all. While a general discussion of this topic could be helpful and, I think, would fall within our forum guidelines, just a reminder not to get into discussions describing personal problems or giving personal advice.
Q8 Why donāt you allow discussion of Personal practice, personal problems or diet and medical issues?
A : This forum is not a support group. Moderators cannot ensure that your personal revelations will be well received by the community. It is not possible to render meaningful assistance on such issues through the modality of an anonymous Internet forum! If it is really necessary to discuss such topics, it should be done with reference to generalities, such as would be found in a book or in a Dhamma talk. Alternatively, those interested in such conversation can use the Personal Message (PM) feature to discuss among themselves.
The internet should not be anyoneās prime source of information or advice. Apparently simple life hacks such as diet, exercise and meditation can often produce adverse effects, and sometimes even be life-threatening. Users should always contact their own doctors, dietitians, therapists and spiritual advisors before embarking on any course of action which could potentially be hazardous to their physical or mental health.
Regards,
suaimhneas (on behalf of the moderators)
To get things rolling the mods will allow us to post links to personal accounts of people practicing with mental illnesses though only so long as we donāt try to skirt the rules and make it a discussion about personal practice/problems.
What i would love to have here is just a compilation of resources for practioners with mental health concerns to explore. If i come across anything i will endeavor to add here and i encourage everyone else to also do so.
This is such an important topic! Thanks for starting the conversation @SeanB
We often hear people are told that meditation is a cure-all for everything from anxiety, depression, trauma, intrusive thoughts, schizophrenia etc etc but I truly despair at people with complex mental health issues being blithely encouraged to practice meditation.
Without proper care, rather than helping, itās likely that meditation will actually exacerbate the existing mental health condition.
People with active mental health conditions need access to qualified and informed meditation teachers, which in this case means someone who is both experienced in meditation and also who has a good knowledge about various mental health conditions. It is especially very dangerous for an uninformed meditation teacher to give advice to people struggling with an acute episode, and in many cases would be considered a breach of their duty of care, with potential legal consequences. Always get professional help.
Most people will go through a mental health issue at some stage in their life. There are many conditions all with very different symptoms. We canāt just have a one size fits all approach to mental health and meditation. Also, sometimes meditation will be fine for some folks, but at other times it will be problematic for them, though they might be fine to practice meditation later, depending on what is going on with their condition.
Some mental health issues are generally not suited to prolonged periods of seated meditation, where they are left sitting with their thoughts - such as anxiety, intrusive or obsessive thoughts, or acute episodes of PTSD, suicidal thoughts or self harm. So, for example, someone who is experiencing severe anxiety should avoid long periods of silent seated meditation, but might be okay doing some calming walking meditation, or some chanting, or controlled breathing practices. Itās important to recognise that there are often bodily symptoms to thing such as PTSD and anxiety and that these also need to be acknowledged and managed.
Other peopleās symptoms will be triggered by silence, social isolation and solitude of a retreat or monastery environment, especially those with some types of schizophrenia, including paranoia, persecution, or delusional patterns. For these folks, sometimes silence and solitude means they lose touch with our shared experience of reality and deluded views take over, and they may start to have paranoid thought patterns, hear voices or experience visual disturbances. These folks might not be suited to long intensive retreats but might be able to do short stays where they are more involved in community.
Some general advice for people with mental health issues:
Some suggestions for Teachers and organisations:
I have done mental health first aid training and suicide prevention and intervention training and these experiences were extremely valuable. Importantly I learnt that many of the usual approaches one might take to things are actually the WRONG approach. So itās worth doing such training.
Lastly these days, folks who have a diagnosis are usually pretty keyed in to their condition and good at self care. But itās the undiagnosed folks or unrecognised underlying conditions triggered by meditation that are likely to create the biggest challenges in retreat environments, both for the individual and the organisers.
There are several good resources out there, check them out!
https://meditatinginsafety.org.uk/
Cheetah House
Resources for organisations and individuals, including symptoms, treatment, training programs, etc
https://www.cheetahhouse.org/
Meditation Safety Toolbox
Very comprehensive academic studies and resources from Brown University, it has lots of info and modules informed by research as well as resources for organisations and individuals.
Meditation Safety Toolbox | The Britton Lab | Brown University
You might want to check out two figures leading this field:
Dr Willoughby Britton - the academic behind the Meditation Safety Toolbox above and involved with Cheetah House
Dr David Treleaven, also involved with Cheetah House and who wrote a book called Trauma Sensitive Mindfulness.
Hope this helps!
Iāve been treated for schizophrenia since just after I finished high school in 1996. I had a career as a software engineer and ordained as an anagarika at Bodhinyana in 2006. My application letter included information about my illness.
Shortly after, during the rains retreat, I had a psychotic episode that required me changing medications from Risperidone to Clozapine. The latter is a more effective drug but with potentially very serious side effects. Changing medications required about a 2 month stay on the psychiatric ward of a public hospital. Once I was discharged in January 2007 I ordained again as an anagarika and now have 14 rains as a fully ordained monk.
Once a month I get a blood test and visit the public outpatient clinic in Gosnells. Iām pretty much their star patient and my 4 month trip to Sri Lanka in 2014 made it into their best practices for Clozapine patients travelling overseas.
As guest monk at Bodhinyana Iāve seen many cases of mental illness where visitors struggled. At least one young man ordained but had a really hard time and eventually disrobed. My advice is to take things very slowly and to make sure you discuss your situation with your health care providers.
Mega-metta,
Ajahn J.R.
Anumodana sadhu sadhu sadhu for the monastics replies 
It meets my feeling what good spiritual friends would do if one finds oneself going out of mind.
When I read the moderators posting I felt a deja vu to feelings and thoughts I had when everything collapsed. And to sum it up I repeat an earlier sentence: Organised religion canāt help you, not even what I thought was the right one for me, so I ended up hating everything about it.
My advice is to remember that you have to watch out for yourself. Donāt trust a teacher, retreat manager, or monk with your health. They are not psychiatrists. They do not understand mental illness or medication at a deep level. If you think things are going poorly or the meditation is making things worse, you need to trust yourself and back off.
Discussion of medication and personal experience regarding the expression of metta.
Just finished a 10 day metta retreat with Bhante Sujato, was an excellent experience for me. One question i did find myself asking was would the experience of metta (something im not particularly accomplished in) be hindered by my medication (i have bipolar 1 and take the mood stabliser Lithium). I think in my experience the answer to that is no. I had one strong experience of metta on the retreat and it was a kind of āahaā moment with shifting perspectives rather than a slow build up - which would be what i would expect if medication had been hindering metta expression below a certain physical threshold.
In conclusion im more willing to believe my difficulty in expressing metta is due to inexperience rather than my mood stabilising medication. Obviously this is one experience.
Hi there Sean, I came across this podcast and thought it might be of interest to you, havenāt listened to all of it yet but so far itās pretty good. hope all is well with you.
Thanks Adrian good addition to the thread.
Guest has phd in neuropsychiatry and meditation teacher experience
Some things mentioned
Wow you summarized it really well 
It was a great conversation I thought.
thanks 
im hoping future seekers will have an easy time looking for stuff.
yeah she was a good guest kept it rather simple and straight forward. guess ill keep trying to get metta to work lol
Sorry Iām a bit late to the game, but one of my teachers, Ayya Sudhamma, alerted me to this thread and thought I should share my essay on being bipolar and Buddhist: The Bipolar Buddhist.
If you have issues with depression, Iāve also written up my experiences with depression and Buddhist practice: Buddhist Approaches to Depression. That one is currently in draft form (you might see some suggested edits that I am still working on) but you might find it helpful if you have issues with depression.