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I'm shocked that a relatively new clinical practice with only moderate evidence behind it would be overhyped to sell magazines. Shocked I tell you. I was intro

by pmyteh 9y ago

I'm shocked that a relatively new clinical practice with only moderate evidence behind it would be overhyped to sell magazines. Shocked I tell you. I was introduced to mindfulness practice as a therapy for depression several years ago at my university. They were clear it was a new approach for clinical use (though building on a long history of meditation) and that although the initial research results were promising it was still very much a developing area. For what it's worth, I've personally found it one of the more effective techniques I've been taught for relapse prevention. I support both its ongoing use and a robust attitude to demanding high-quality evidence for/against it. The article is just describing the hype cycle for technology as applied to psychological therapy: "hey, I've a new idea" -> promising early results -> hype -> "this new approach will solve everything" -> ["actually this sucks" NOW HERE] -> "well, perhaps it's helpful for this area (for some people) (some of the time) -> "hey, I've a new idea" -> ...

brianmcc 9y ago
The "trough of disillusionment". Great term! http://www.gartner.com/technology/research/methodologies/hype-cycle.jsp http://www.gartner.com/technology/research/methodologies/hyp...
- amelius 9y ago
  In this particular case, the effect may be amplified, because expectations (the y-axis in the graph) may have an effect on meditation/mindfulness.
  - brianmcc 9y ago
    A hype-based placebo effect perhaps?
DanBC 9y ago
> I was introduced to mindfulness practice as a therapy for depression several years ago at my university. They were clear it was a new approach for clinical use (though building on a long history of meditation) and that although the initial research results were promising it was still very much a developing area. It would be great if that's the approach other people were taking. Not everyone does this. Some of them will push mindfullness as being risk free (for a small number of people it increases risk of self harm or death by suicide) and effective for most people (it's effective for some people, but we don't know how many people). > For what it's worth, I've personally found it one of the more effective techniques I've been taught for relapse prevention. Yes. This is why it's important to be honest. "This seems to work, and work well, for some people. It might work for you. You should try it, and if it doesn't work we'll talk about other options." is fine. But I know people who are being denied any other option.
- vanderZwan 9y ago
  > But I know people who are being denied any other option. Am I correct in guessing you are talking about a work setting, where the situation is similar to something like: "if you're overworked we're not going to address the root problem by lowering the amount of work to a sensible load, we're going to make you do more work in the form of mental exercises to strengthen your resilience, so we can burden you with more work!"?
  - DanBC 9y ago
    No. I'm talking about an English NHS health settting.
    - vanderZwan 9y ago
      Oh wow, I would expect a situation with proper health care professionals to be better than that. That sounds pretty bad.
vanderZwan 9y ago
I completely agree, and would like to highlight one part of your comment and build on it a bit: > I was introduced to mindfulness practice as a therapy for depression several years ago at my university Compare that to the other scenarios described in the article, or how another commenter here mentions "mindfulness events for executives and corporate". I think that just shows how mindfulness is not the real issue, but how it is applied (or worse: how things that are not mindfulness being sold as mindfulness). To give an illustration of effective mindfulness that (hopefully) does not come across as pseudoscience, I'll describe how my anger would explode in the past, and how mindfulness helped me solve that (note that "anger management" was not listed in the article). Mindfulness was suggested to me by a therapist (so not a magazine selling snake-oil), and despite my extreme skepticism at the time, it was very effective when I actually sat down to do it. And if you look at how my angry emotions would run away from me, this makes a lot of sense. One cause was a reinforcing loop: upsetting thoughts causing hyper-focus on other upsetting thoughts and memories, causing more anger, bringing up more thoughts/memories. So basically, what we all have, but the feedback loop was amplified and out of balance (years later I have been diagnosed with ADD, and hyper-focus is one of the symptoms - I would not be surprised if this was the main cause of anger management issues that many ADD/ADHD people suffer from). The other issue was me trying to control these escalating emotions, which was so frustrating that it became another source of anger in itself. As others noted, mindfulness is mostly about becoming consciously aware of where attention is drawn to, being able to step back, and guiding attention where you want it to go to. This is different from trying to directly control the emotions triggered by whatever I end up paying attention to; I can let my emotions freely sort themselves out, as a result there is no frustrating self-inhibition. That is all that the ten-minute-breathing exercise is for: practicing the ability to step back from the thoughts as they appear to you. That is what lets you take control of where your attention goes, allowing you to guide it elsewhere. I don't think the meditation does much else, except maybe letting out bottled-up emotions. The funny thing is that practicing this awareness for myself has also helped me to be more aware of what others are saying and thinking during conversations, and making sure that we are actually talking about the same things. So my inter-personal communication has improved too. Anyway, my point is that yes, mindfulness has helped me tremendously, and there is nothing mysterious about why it did: the main source of my anger was the way I processed my thoughts. Mindfulness can be great for helping with problems caused by that. However, if the main causes are external factors, like a lack of social interactions, or being in an abusive relationship at home or at work, then what would the problems be that mindfulness can solve?

by pmyteh 9y ago

brianmcc 9y ago

The "trough of disillusionment". Great term! http://www.gartner.com/technology/research/methodologies/hype-cycle.jsp http://www.gartner.com/technology/research/methodologies/hyp...

amelius 9y ago
In this particular case, the effect may be amplified, because expectations (the y-axis in the graph) may have an effect on meditation/mindfulness.
- brianmcc 9y ago
  A hype-based placebo effect perhaps?

DanBC 9y ago

> I was introduced to mindfulness practice as a therapy for depression several years ago at my university. They were clear it was a new approach for clinical use (though building on a long history of meditation) and that although the initial research results were promising it was still very much a developing area. It would be great if that's the approach other people were taking. Not everyone does this. Some of them will push mindfullness as being risk free (for a small number of people it increases risk of self harm or death by suicide) and effective for most people (it's effective for some people, but we don't know how many people). > For what it's worth, I've personally found it one of the more effective techniques I've been taught for relapse prevention. Yes. This is why it's important to be honest. "This seems to work, and work well, for some people. It might work for you. You should try it, and if it doesn't work we'll talk about other options." is fine. But I know people who are being denied any other option.

vanderZwan 9y ago
> But I know people who are being denied any other option. Am I correct in guessing you are talking about a work setting, where the situation is similar to something like: "if you're overworked we're not going to address the root problem by lowering the amount of work to a sensible load, we're going to make you do more work in the form of mental exercises to strengthen your resilience, so we can burden you with more work!"?
- DanBC 9y ago
  No. I'm talking about an English NHS health settting.
  - vanderZwan 9y ago
    Oh wow, I would expect a situation with proper health care professionals to be better than that. That sounds pretty bad.

vanderZwan 9y ago

I completely agree, and would like to highlight one part of your comment and build on it a bit: > I was introduced to mindfulness practice as a therapy for depression several years ago at my university Compare that to the other scenarios described in the article, or how another commenter here mentions "mindfulness events for executives and corporate". I think that just shows how mindfulness is not the real issue, but how it is applied (or worse: how things that are not mindfulness being sold as mindfulness). To give an illustration of effective mindfulness that (hopefully) does not come across as pseudoscience, I'll describe how my anger would explode in the past, and how mindfulness helped me solve that (note that "anger management" was not listed in the article). Mindfulness was suggested to me by a therapist (so not a magazine selling snake-oil), and despite my extreme skepticism at the time, it was very effective when I actually sat down to do it. And if you look at how my angry emotions would run away from me, this makes a lot of sense. One cause was a reinforcing loop: upsetting thoughts causing hyper-focus on other upsetting thoughts and memories, causing more anger, bringing up more thoughts/memories. So basically, what we all have, but the feedback loop was amplified and out of balance (years later I have been diagnosed with ADD, and hyper-focus is one of the symptoms - I would not be surprised if this was the main cause of anger management issues that many ADD/ADHD people suffer from). The other issue was me trying to control these escalating emotions, which was so frustrating that it became another source of anger in itself. As others noted, mindfulness is mostly about becoming consciously aware of where attention is drawn to, being able to step back, and guiding attention where you want it to go to. This is different from trying to directly control the emotions triggered by whatever I end up paying attention to; I can let my emotions freely sort themselves out, as a result there is no frustrating self-inhibition. That is all that the ten-minute-breathing exercise is for: practicing the ability to step back from the thoughts as they appear to you. That is what lets you take control of where your attention goes, allowing you to guide it elsewhere. I don't think the meditation does much else, except maybe letting out bottled-up emotions. The funny thing is that practicing this awareness for myself has also helped me to be more aware of what others are saying and thinking during conversations, and making sure that we are actually talking about the same things. So my inter-personal communication has improved too. Anyway, my point is that yes, mindfulness has helped me tremendously, and there is nothing mysterious about why it did: the main source of my anger was the way I processed my thoughts. Mindfulness can be great for helping with problems caused by that. However, if the main causes are external factors, like a lack of social interactions, or being in an abusive relationship at home or at work, then what would the problems be that mindfulness can solve?