My question is for psychologist and psychiatrist. Can breathing technique meditation (anapana meditation) cure clinical depression and anxiety disorder? I am taking serta100 and risdone plus. I have not visited my psychiatrist doctor since 8 9 months. That's y I am asking here. How much time it would take to cure clinical depression and anxiety by doing meditation?
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Hello Mr. lybrate-user, I have a question before giving you answer. Are you currently on medication? If you are on, it would be like you are taking medications without consulting your treating doctor. If not on, it would have been like stopping medications abruptly without the knowledge of your doctor apparently. As you said, you are diagnosed with depression and anxiety, have your experienced any depressive or anxiety symptoms after you stopped your meds during that 9 months. If you are experiencing any improvement in the state of your mood when you are performing meditation please do continue, as it will become a catalyst to cure your condition. All these meditations will definitely beneficial and enhance your mental health, so I would definitely suggest. But I would also recommend you to consult your psychiatrist about your medications. It is always not suggested to stop meds abruptly, as the subsided symptoms may come to surface at any point in time. Schedule an appointment and see the doctor. When you are in medications, it would definitely take 4 weeks duration for it to calm you down, after which, it has to continued till you are completely out of it. Engage yourself in any kind of activities, do not let yourself sit alone and think. Be with people, talk to them. Eat healthy, go out for a walk. By looking at your age, it will not be a big issue, to find yourself engaged with people. Please do continue your breathing exercises and other meditations until you see your doctor. Please do revert back if you have any queries. Hope your doubts go cleared. Stay safe and healthy.
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Dear lybrate-user, breathing techniques are certainly useful especially in anxiety disorders and to lesser extent in depression. They may be enough alone for handling mild anxiety. For moderate to severe cases, these exercises work well in addition to psychiatric medications and psychotherapy. Since you have been on sertraline and risdone plus, I am not sure if the diagnosis is depression/anxiety and whether diagnosis of ocd was also made. Any sound advice about medication can only be given after knowing detailed history. I will advise that you can start breathing exercises whenever you want but do not stop medication without consulting a psychiatrist. You can also learn other kinds of relaxation exercises from a psychologist or through reliable online self-help sources which will help in coping with anxiety.
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Dear lybrate-user, yes, any breathing technique is helpful in clinical depression. But they are only add ons to main treatment. You can not live only with the side dishes. I doubt the diagnosis - it may be more than clinical depression. Please consult your psychiatrist so that serta and risdone plus dose is adjusted according to your improvement. Don't stop the medication and start anapana meditation and continue both.
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Yes breathing exercises can help but they are add-ons. You need to take medicine under proper observation of a psychiatrist as you mentioned you have not visited your doctor since long. That is wrong. Take proper guidance and continue both medicine and exercise together and then as per advice from clinician you can gradually reduce and discontinue medicine. But everything should be done under observation.
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Meditation helps depression only by reducing the time of thinking about your actual troubling problems as you concentrate more on things unrelated to those problems at least for some time. There is no other proven benefits. So if you do meditation in all the time you are awake, then only it really helps you for the whole day. Seriously. Meditation helps a little bit better in anxiety, it helps to monitor and practice and experience slow breathing, and heart rate (due to rest state). And as in first paragraph stopping repeated thoughts of troubling issues helps at that exact point of time. Of course, you need to add proper psychotherapy (cbt) for faster and more constant and longer symptom-free period; and along with it, add just any sort of dance (for 5 minute intervals 3 times a day, on empty stomach) is one of the best lifestyle add-on (in addition to the drugs), aerobic exercise is better, yoga a little, meditation very slightly. Kindly review with a psychiatrist, for cbt and for whether your drugs need to be tapered or fine-tuned for the better.
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