Research published in Journal of Anxiety Disorders in 2008 that was carried out by the Department of Psychiatry, Weill Cornell Medical College, United States &JFK Johnson Rehabilitation Institute, New Jersey Neuroscience Institute showed significant decrease in patients anxiety, tension, worry and depressive symptoms (GAD) following an 8-week group mindfulness based course.
Generalised anxiety disorder (GAD) is a relatively common anxiety problem. Unlike “normal” anxiety people experience in their daily lives, GAD is a chronic and exaggerated experience of worry and tension, even though there is nothing that may provoke it.
The causes of GAD may be both biological and psychological, however during periods of stress, the symptoms of GAD appear to worsen. There are a range of symptoms experienced by those suffering from GAD, these include:-
Difficulty concentrating
Obsessional thinking about one subject
Constantly thinking about the worst outcome
Insomnia
Feeling depressed and
Easily lose ones patience
Mindfulness
Mindfulness is the cultivation of moment-to-moment non-judgmental awareness through the regular practice of maintaining awareness on the breath with emphasis on an open awareness to the contents of ones mind.
Since the nature of anxiety is normally worrying which is future focused, the training of present-moment mindful awareness enables one develop a detached observation towards the content of ones mind, hence provides a non-drug based alternative.
Reference: S Evans , S Ferrando, M Findler, C Stowell, C Smart, D Haglin; Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), Journal of Anxiety Disorders 22 (2008) 716–721
