Studies on the impact of meditation on mental health: A critical review.
Psychiatria Danubina April 1, 2026 Ksenija Popadić
Research on meditation for mental health faces key challenges: meditation covers diverse practices with different techniques, goals, and outcomes, making comparisons difficult. Standardizing protocols and operationalizing the specific type of meditation are proposed solutions. Meditators vary in experience, motivation, and characteristics, so tracking participant traits and stratifying samples in quantitative studies is essential. Repeated measurements often yield inconsistent results due to methodological shortcomings and lack of a theoretical framework. Defining measurable outcomes specific to research goals is necessary, and combining qualitative with quantitative methods helps capture subjective experiences. Interdisciplinary research incorporating psychology, philosophy, anthropology, neuroscience, biology, sociology, and comparative cultural and religious studies is recommended to better understand meditation's impact on mental processes, personality, and behavior, and to improve its application in mental health.