Summary: Yes, there are downsides to meditation for mental health that occur in some people. Meditation can increase awareness of thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations. This increased awareness can lead to different outcomes for different people – mostly positive, but some negative.
Key Points:
- Close to 20% of adults in the U.S. practice some form of meditation
- Evidence shows meditation can be an effective complementary support for mental health treatment.
- A majority of highly regarded mental health treatment programs offer meditation or mindfulness as a voluntary option to enhance mental health treatment outcomes.
- While generally considered safe and effective, adverse effects associated with meditation occur at about the same rate as adverse effects associated with psychotherapy.
Complementary Support for Mental Health Treatment
Beginning in the 1970s with the advent of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) for mental health treatment, pioneered by Jon Kabat-Zinn, meditation and meditation-adjacent practices have slowly grown in both popularity and acceptance by mental health patients and providers in clinical practice.
The most commonly recognized benefits of meditation for mental health include:
- Reduced stress
- Decreased anxiety
- Reduced depressive symptoms
- Reduced emotional reactivity
- Improved quality of life
- Improved overall wellbeing
- Improved concentration
- Enhanced awareness
- Improved ability to recognize emotional states
- Enhanced ability to process emotion
- Improved distress tolerance
The potential downsides of meditation for mental health – i.e. adverse effects associated with meditation in mental health treatment – include:
- Increased stress
- Increased anxiety
- Elevated depressive symptoms
- Perceptual changes, i.e. hallucinations
- Cognitive changes, i.e. delusions
- Decreased self-esteem
As we can see, the potential downsides to meditation for mental health are the exact opposite of the potential upsides, or benefits. That’s why it’s important to review research like this. While meditation is relatively common in treatment plans, it’s not the right choice for everyone. It’s crucial to recognize the people who don’t respond well to meditation are not alone. In fact, in some cases, there are significant downsides to meditation for mental health, as a new study published in 2025 shows.
This brings us to something related to meditation we’d like to address.
Do I Have to Meditate as Part of Mental Health Treatment?
No, you don’t.
For the most part, meditation is considered a good thing by people that regularly practice meditation. Also, the calm, centered, peaceful states of mind meditators can access are considered desirable states or goals.
We get an image of a Yoda-like or Buddha-like figure, content and wise, that we think we should aspire too.
But the fact is that meditation is not for everyone. And if sitting down to try to meditate, or trying basic mindfulness meditation, is a miserable experience for you, here’s something to take remember:
You don’t have to do it. If you don’t want to, or it simply does nothing for you, that’s okay. Your path to healing and recovery is yours, and meditation does not have to be part of it.
If it doesn’t help, and you have a negative experience, then, in consultation with your treatment team, you can remove meditation from your treatment options, if it was part of your treatment plan.
Now let’s take a look at that study on the possible downsides of meditation for mental health we refer to above.
New Research on Potential Downsides to Meditation for Mental Health
The authors of the review and meta-analysis “The Mind’s Abyss: Exploring The Adverse Effects of Distinct Forms of Meditation” collected data from 147 studies related to meditation in the context of mental health treatment, with the goal of “assessing the presence of adverse effects (AEs)” associated with the following three categories of meditation:
- Focused attention (FA) meditation, which trains a meditator to focus attention on a specific object or process, such as an image (object) or breathing (process) in order to calm the mind and promote relaxation. Basic mindfulness exercises use this approach for beginners.
- Open monitoring (OM) meditation, which trains a meditator to observe their thoughts, emotions, and subjective physical sensations without reaction or judgment, in order to reduce automatic, unconscious cognitive or emotional reactions to stimuli. This the second step in most mindfulness-type meditation exercises, and the core approach in meditation styles such as Vipassana meditation.
- Loving-kindness/compassion (LK/C) meditation, which trains a meditator to focus on cultivating compassion for, love for, and kindness towards other people in order to promote positive emotions and general wellbeing.
Here’s what they found.
Focused-Attention (FA) Meditation, Adverse Effects
AEs associated with “heightened focus on an object or process” may include:
- Frustration at not being able to maintain focus
- Feelings of inadequacy related to inability to maintain focus
- Increased stress
- Increased anxiety
- Feelings of dysphoria, i.e. negative emotional states
Next, the outcomes for open-monitoring (OM) meditation.
Open-Monitoring (OM) Meditation, Adverse Effects
AEs associated with “increased awareness of one’s physical body, thoughts, and emotions” may include:
- Uncomfortable thoughts
- Distressing emotions
- Worry about physical sensations
- Traumatic memories
These, in turn, may exacerbate symptoms of:
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Post-traumatic stress disorder
In addition, subjective experiences labeled as dissolution of ego and sudden realizations can cause significant psychological distress, which, in most cases, resolves after discontinuing the meditation session.
Next, the outcomes for loving-kindness/compassion (LK/C) meditation.
Loving-Kindness/Compassion (LK/C) Meditation, Adverse Effects
AEs associated with “increased awareness of the suffering in the world” may include:
- Emotional discomfort
- Anxiety
- Decreased self-esteem
We’ll share the rest of these results below. But first, we’ll offer an important aside.
Downsides to Meditation for Mental Health: Off-Label Use Is Complicated
When we talk about meditation for mental health, we need to remember that meditation – including the three types we cover in this article – was not originally intended as mental health treatment. Therefore, from one point of view, we can think of meditation for mental health as an off-label use of meditation, in the same way a medication may work and be effective for problems it was not designed to treat.
When a physician recommends the off-label use of medication, they review the risks and benefits with the patient before prescribing it. That’s a logical approach, which mental health providers can consider adopting when they suggest meditation as complementary support for mental health treatment.
Let’s back up a moment and remind ourselves that almost all forms of meditation are derived from spiritual practices designed to facilitate reaching enlightenment and/or becoming enlightened. While the goal of recovering from a mental health disorder is not necessarily in conflict with reaching enlightenment, it’s also not necessarily in accord with it, either.
Enlightenment and remission of mental health symptoms are not the same goal, and each may or may not include varying levels of discomfort. Therefore, when patients try meditation for mental health and have a negative experience, the patient and provider can collaborate and decide whether that type of discomfort promotes or inhibits recovery and proceed based on what they conclude.
Now, the rest of the results.
Prevalence of Adverse Effects in Meditation for Mental Health
The study authors found that adverse effects in meditation for mental health occur in 8 percent of patients. Among the eight percent (8%) of people who reported AEs:
- 33% reported increased depressive symptoms
- 27% reported increased anxiety symptoms
- 25% reported cognitive anomalies such as delusions or hallucination
- 11% reported gastrointestinal problems.
- 11% reported suicidal ideation
As a reminder, those percentages are among the eight percent (8%) of people who reported AEs, and that the most alarming AE, suicidal ideation, is also a known side effect of antidepressant and other types of medication in common use today.
By reporting this we mean not to minimize the phenomenon of treatment-related suicidal ideation, but rather to inform people that experienced mental health providers know how to handle treatment-related suicidal ideation safely, and further, that for people with mental health disorders, mental health treatment decreases rather than increases both suicidal ideation and suicide attempts.
In addition, previous research published in the article “Adverse Events in Meditation Practices and Meditation-Based Therapies: A Systematic Review” offer this essential perspective on AEs in meditation:
“The overall prevalence of meditation adverse events (8.3%) is similar to those reported for psychotherapy practice in general.”
Our primary takeaways from this research are that while there are downsides to meditation for mental health, meditation for mental health is a safe and effective complementary support for mental health treatment, and that if meditation doesn’t work for you, it’s okay and you’re not alone. You can talk with your provider and find a complementary support – meaning in addition to, not instead of – for your current mental health treatment plan that doesn’t include adverse effects (AEs) and works for you.
Gianna Melendez
Jodie Dahl, CpHT