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I’m inclined to think this stuff is more correlation than causation. Meditating is a weird thing to do. Outside of eastern religious practice at least. You get

I’m inclined to think this stuff is more correlation than causation. Meditating is a weird thing to do. Outside of eastern religious practice at least. You get some some semi-normal people who do it, ray dalio comes to mind, but mostly it attracts people who aren’t mentally well to begin with. It’s exactly the group of people you’d expect to have these kinds of problems. The same group that should avoid weed and shrooms and for the same reasons. There are a lot of these people on hn and in the tech world, overachievers high on the neuroticism scale. A normal person doesn’t meditate more than 30 minutes a day. That alone is a symptom of deeper issues.

louison11 4y ago
Nobody is mentally well to begin with. Suffering is universal. You simply get people who are ready to deal with their suffering and seek help through appropriate practices, and people who are in denial and convince themselves they're fine. There are a lot of very wise, sane, stable people who meditate a lot more than 30 minutes a day.
- 2devnull 4y ago
  There is a spectrum, on one end well adapted, psychologically advantaged individuals, and at the other end people who are more prone to suffering or various difficulties. I cited ray dalio as one of many examples of same, wise stable people. That there is a bell curve is obviously the case. Most people do not meditate daily. Of those that do, the tendency to have psychological issues is greater than in the set of individuals that do not.
sixo 4y ago
That meditation reliably causes these crisis events (so much that it's an acknowledged "stage" of the process; the "dark night of the soul" term comes from the Roman Catholic contemplative tradition which maybe doesn't refer to the same thing but has a similar role in the process) is pretty much THE criteria to establish causation; that it only happens to a portion of meditators additionally rules out "the kind of person who would meditate is going to have this happen anyway". Meditating IS weird but, historically, not nearly as weird as a-spirituality, which is the state of the "normal person" in your comment. And, of course the drive to meditate reflects some difference relative to the general population, but "symptoms of deeper issues" implies buy-in to a kind of the therapeutic/mental-health framework of "if you're unable to exist within the range of 'normal' all the time, you have a disease" and, well, it seems pretty reasonable to be discontent with your life—either your life or your feelings needs to change, and emotional searching is kind of the obvious way to address that.
- 2devnull 4y ago
  My intent was to single out a-spiritual meditation. Meditation that occurs as part of an established program of spiritual practice, that goes along with other aspects of religion within a centuries old framework is obviously the opposite of weird. It is normal. Whether what you call crisis events that are part of the process is == psychotic episodes seems dubious to me. The psychosis I hear reported from more extreme “aspiritual” meditators doesn’t sound productive but disabling and in many cases permanently so. In the context of established religion, such things are “selected against” in the Darwinian sense. Anything that’s part of the process within the context of a long running time tested religious framework, be it Buddhism, Catholicism, Hasidism etc… must be evolutionarily advantageous (in a institutional not biological sense).
  - sixo 4y ago
    Oh yes ok. I also don't buy that crisis events are == psychosis. Or maybe, my first approx would be that psychosis is a spiritual crisis event sans any organizing moral framework, and the lack of framework is what makes it disabling. But I'm in no way informed.
twobitshifter 4y ago
You’re saying it’s a selection bias, but the author claims most people with these symptoms had no previous mental issues. Further, meditating is marketed as addressing emotional issues and if it’s not doing that, it’s either a placebo or worse potentially harmful to the people most likely to try it.
- 2devnull 4y ago
  Most people who have a psychotic episode have never had a prior psychotic episode. Meditation being marketed as a solution to emotional (psychological) issues is precisely the point I’m trying to make. This is the same problem with detecting the link between antidepressants and suicide. The link between Prozac and suicide was noted in the 80s but written off as correlation. Because correlation is just as plausible an explanation as causation is. It’s difficult to not to conflate the two. In the case of meditation, I don’t see many people acknowledging the possibility that mental health problems could be correlated with, as opposed to caused by, meditation itself. Most people I know are psychologically healthy and do not meditate. The people I know who have turned to meditation have done it help with their problems (physical or emotional). I wouldn’t argue that it’s a perfect or even strong correlation, merely that the correlation is there and it may be enough to explain these somewhat rare outcomes from meditation practice.

louison11 4y ago

Nobody is mentally well to begin with. Suffering is universal. You simply get people who are ready to deal with their suffering and seek help through appropriate practices, and people who are in denial and convince themselves they're fine. There are a lot of very wise, sane, stable people who meditate a lot more than 30 minutes a day.

2devnull 4y ago
There is a spectrum, on one end well adapted, psychologically advantaged individuals, and at the other end people who are more prone to suffering or various difficulties. I cited ray dalio as one of many examples of same, wise stable people. That there is a bell curve is obviously the case. Most people do not meditate daily. Of those that do, the tendency to have psychological issues is greater than in the set of individuals that do not.

sixo 4y ago

That meditation reliably causes these crisis events (so much that it's an acknowledged "stage" of the process; the "dark night of the soul" term comes from the Roman Catholic contemplative tradition which maybe doesn't refer to the same thing but has a similar role in the process) is pretty much THE criteria to establish causation; that it only happens to a portion of meditators additionally rules out "the kind of person who would meditate is going to have this happen anyway". Meditating IS weird but, historically, not nearly as weird as a-spirituality, which is the state of the "normal person" in your comment. And, of course the drive to meditate reflects some difference relative to the general population, but "symptoms of deeper issues" implies buy-in to a kind of the therapeutic/mental-health framework of "if you're unable to exist within the range of 'normal' all the time, you have a disease" and, well, it seems pretty reasonable to be discontent with your life—either your life or your feelings needs to change, and emotional searching is kind of the obvious way to address that.

2devnull 4y ago
My intent was to single out a-spiritual meditation. Meditation that occurs as part of an established program of spiritual practice, that goes along with other aspects of religion within a centuries old framework is obviously the opposite of weird. It is normal. Whether what you call crisis events that are part of the process is == psychotic episodes seems dubious to me. The psychosis I hear reported from more extreme “aspiritual” meditators doesn’t sound productive but disabling and in many cases permanently so. In the context of established religion, such things are “selected against” in the Darwinian sense. Anything that’s part of the process within the context of a long running time tested religious framework, be it Buddhism, Catholicism, Hasidism etc… must be evolutionarily advantageous (in a institutional not biological sense).
- sixo 4y ago
  Oh yes ok. I also don't buy that crisis events are == psychosis. Or maybe, my first approx would be that psychosis is a spiritual crisis event sans any organizing moral framework, and the lack of framework is what makes it disabling. But I'm in no way informed.

twobitshifter 4y ago

You’re saying it’s a selection bias, but the author claims most people with these symptoms had no previous mental issues. Further, meditating is marketed as addressing emotional issues and if it’s not doing that, it’s either a placebo or worse potentially harmful to the people most likely to try it.

2devnull 4y ago
Most people who have a psychotic episode have never had a prior psychotic episode. Meditation being marketed as a solution to emotional (psychological) issues is precisely the point I’m trying to make. This is the same problem with detecting the link between antidepressants and suicide. The link between Prozac and suicide was noted in the 80s but written off as correlation. Because correlation is just as plausible an explanation as causation is. It’s difficult to not to conflate the two. In the case of meditation, I don’t see many people acknowledging the possibility that mental health problems could be correlated with, as opposed to caused by, meditation itself. Most people I know are psychologically healthy and do not meditate. The people I know who have turned to meditation have done it help with their problems (physical or emotional). I wouldn’t argue that it’s a perfect or even strong correlation, merely that the correlation is there and it may be enough to explain these somewhat rare outcomes from meditation practice.