The Royal College of Psychiatrists issued the following news release
from their annual meeting in London, July 1-4 2008:
Meditation Good For Psychiatrists’ Mental Health
Meditation sessions are proving a hit for members of the Royal College
of Psychiatrists at their Annual Meeting at Imperial College, London -
with a growing number claiming they are turning to the spiritual
discipline to combat anxiety and burnout.
Meditation workshops, run by the College’s 2,000-strong Spirituality
Special Interest Group, are overbooked. “It seems to be an indication of
the need for spiritual nourishment, something that College members are
not finding easily in the outside world,” says Dr Sarah Eagger, chair of
the Spirituality Group.
Dr Eagger, consultant psychiatrist at St Charles Hospital, London, said
her daily meditation practice was as important in her everyday work as
her medical training. “A strong spiritual practice really comes into its
own when you are faced with a very distressed patient, while also coping
with the pressures of working in teams under immense stress, and then
having to spend hours filling in forms that make you feel that you are
not trusted. I am stressed enough as it is. Without meditation practice
to keep a still space inside, I would be suffering burn-out.”
Dr Andrew Powell, the founding chair of the Spirituality Group, said:
“There is a level of concern within the profession about being trapped
in a culture of measurement and box-ticking. The result is that it’s
becoming ever more difficult to practice psychiatry, to contain the
anxiety and concerns of our patients, to maintain a common humanity and
avoid getting caught up in an ‘us and them’ mentality.”
However, many mental health practitioners struggle to understand the
relevance of spirituality to their work, the meeting was told. Julia
Head, specialist chaplain at the Maudsley Hospital in London, told the
conference that spirituality is increasingly recognised as a vital part
of good mental health care.
“The National Institute for Mental Health in England is just the latest
body to acknowledge the limitations of modern medicine by recommending
that practitioners provide spiritual support alongside physical
treatments, including medication,” said Dr Head who coordinates
‘recovery’ training programmes for 300 mental health practitioners in
the London boroughs of Southwark and Lambeth.
“Practitioners should be encouraging hope, and fostering a desire for
change and the possibility of recovery. Yet this idea of healing, as
opposed to clinical treatment, is something that is foreign to many
practitioners,” she said. ‘They feel trapped in a culture where
measuring clinical activity is the priority. It takes them time to
understand that in order to support their patients’ recovery, they need
to feel valued themselves and to take time for their own nurture.’
The meeting was also told that the evidence-base for the therapeutic
value of meditation for a wide range of health problems was
significantly stronger than most pharmaceutical products. A new meta-
analysis of 823 randomly controlled trials of meditation, conducted by
the US National Institute of Alternative and Complementary Medicine,
showed the clinical benefits of meditation across a wide range of
physical and emotional disorders.
“Meditation is a way of life rather than quick fix achieved by paying
for eight sessions or using gimmicks such as incense, music and light,”
Dr Avdesh Sharma, past president of the Indian Psychiatric Association,
said. “It doesn’t work immediately. You need to practice it for several
weeks before the effects begin to be felt.”
Dr Sharma added: “If meditation was a drug, we’d all want shares in it.
It has a beneficial effect on most physical health problems and is very
effective for mental health problems significantly reducing levels of
depression and anxiety by improving relaxation, oxygenation of the
brain, insomnia and energy levels.”
