Depression and depressive episodes can be situations that we all experience from time to time. While dealing with the situations we live in in daily life, we can have such periods when we get tired of the hustle and bustle of daily life. Mindfulness, also known as Conscious Awareness, has been proven to have a positive effect on depression and recurrence of depression. In this blog, I talked about the symptoms of depression and the effects of mindfulness, a positive supporter, on depression.
The Relationship Between Mindfulness and Depression
There is a lot of research on the relationship between mindfulness and depression. When we look at the researches, it is possible to say that there is a meaningful relationship between conscious awareness and depression. Mindfulness has positive effects on the recurrence of stress, depression and depression.
We can say that mindfulness is bringing our awareness to the moment we live, without judgment, objectively and graciously. To recognize and accept without judgment what we experience in daily life, our body, sensations, our breath, in fact all our experiences. While running around in our daily lives, trying to train what we need to do, we are moving away from awareness and live in autopilot.
In fact, we cannot realize what we are going through because we live on autopilot and we miss it. When we bring our attention to them, we can notice our reactions to what we experience. We capture the coming and passing of thoughts, what is happening in the moment. In this way, it is possible not to judge our experiences and approach them with less stress. Thanks to the attitudes that mindfulness re-teaches the person, the person can gain a new perspective on their experiences. These attitudes can be listed as follows: Not Judging, Patience, Starting Mind, Trust, Not Trying, Accepting, Quitting.
The Effect of Mindfulness on Depression
Mindfulness increases the ability to cope with stress and supports psychological well-being thanks to the different perspective it brings to the experiences of daily life. Mindful attitudes, experiences of staying in the moment and experiencing various meditation practices increase the ability to cope with negative emotional situations.
When we look at new researches, we often encounter these results. For example, a research was conducted with 122 participants in a new article published in 2020 by Schuling, R. et al. Depressive symptoms of these participants were measured and some of them were included in a group where Midfulness studies will be conducted. It was found that the depressive symptoms of the participants in the mindfulness study group significantly improved during the 6 months of the study.
When similar studies on the subject are examined, we can see that when conscious awareness increases, the perceived stress level decreases. In other words, we can say that the increase in the ability to cope with stress in individuals is possible by changing the meanings they attribute to stress factors and their perspectives on them.
This means that thanks to conscious awareness, we learn the attitude of not judging, and we stay away from judging unpleasant situations. We do not grapple with those situations, we accept them as they are, and we only exist in the moment. When we perceive it with a non-judgmental perspective, the level at which those stress factors affect us decreases. At this point, it is possible to say that Mindfulness is a supportive factor in preventing the recurrence of depression, as the levels of stress factors affecting us have decreased. In other words, we can say that conscious awareness has both a preventive and healing aspect.
