According to a new study, meditation and mindfulness, which are widely perceived as stress-reduction techniques, can also have adverse effects like anxiety, depression, and much less frequently, even suicidal behaviors.

Published this month in Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, the study concluded that the overall prevalence of adverse events of meditation was 8.3 percent. Having performed a meta-analysis of 83 studies published between 1975 and 2019, with a total of 6,703 participants, the researchers found that 55 of these 83 studies included reports of at least one type meditation-related adverse effect. The most common adverse effects of meditation the researchers found were: anxiety, reported in 33 percent of the studies, depression in 27 percent, and cognitive anomalies in 25 percent. Gastrointestinal problems, and suicidal behaviors, were both found in 11 percent of the studies reviewed by the authors, and were the least frequent among the adverse effects.

“For most people [meditation] works fine but it has undoubtedly been overhyped and it’s not universally benevolent… People have experienced anything from an increase in anxiety up to panic attacks,” Dr. Miguel Farias, who leads the Brain, Belief and Behaviour research group at Coventry University in the UK, and lead author of the study, told New Scientist. He also added that the figure of 8.3 percent could be an underestimate because a lot of studies either record only serious negative effects, or don’t record adverse effects at all.