The Effect of Home Buddhist Mindfulness Meditation on Depressive Symptom in Major Depressive Patients

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is the important cause of disability in the world. Major depressive patients that are not respond to the first and second drugs are about 67% and 33%, respectively. Therefore the effective treatment is urgently needed.

To examine the effect of Buddhist mindfulness meditation combined with standard treatment on depression and quality of life in major depressive patient compared to the control group.

It was a quasi experimental study. The subjects with age ranged 20-70 years old and had Thai Hamilton rating scale for depression 13-29 scores were divided in two groups, each group contained 30 persons. The intervention was Buddhist mindfulness meditation which meditated everyday at least 5 days/week, 15 minutes each time, for six weeks. Both groups were treated with standard treatment. All subjects were tested using Thai Hamilton rating scale for depression, and WHOQOL-BREF-THAI questionnaire at baseline and every week for six weeks. Compare the result of Buddhist mindfulness meditation by independent t-test and Chi-square.

The difference between the average of Thai Hamilton rating scale for depression (17.33+5.22 in meditation group and 17.67+6.33 in control group) and WHOQOL-BREF-THAI questionnaire (29.97+15.95 in meditation group and 31.33+12.12 in control group) before and after meditation was not statistically significantly among the two groups (p>0.05). However, it found that at the 6th week, 28 patients from the meditation group (93.3%) and 22 patients (73.3%) from the nonmeditating group improved from depression. When examining by the Chi-square, the meditating group had a statistically significantly different in the number of patients that improved from depression (p-value = 0.04).

At the 6th week of Buddhist mindfulness meditation, significant number of patients were improved from depression. Thus, Buddhist mindfulness meditation should be included in the treatment of depression.