Mindfully Healing

Psychologists typically find that anxiety and depression share many overlapping symptoms. Instead of being ‘depressed’ and/or ‘anxious’, new research suggests five different types of depression and anxiety. The five are tension, anxious arousal, general anxiety, anhedonia — the inability to feel pleasure — and melancholia. Each type has its own particular symptoms and effects on the brain. The researchers describe the types as follows: 1. Tension This type is defined by irritability. People are overly sensitive, touchy, and overwhelmed. The anxiety makes the nervous system hypersensitive. 2. Anxious arousal Cognitive

The treatment also has no side effects. Ten minutes of mindfulness meditation could be an effective alternative to painkillers, new research finds. The quick meditation session was enough to reduce anxiety about pain and increase both pain tolerance and threshold. The results come from a study of 24 healthy young people. Half meditated for 10 minutes while the other half just sat quietly. Then they plunged their hands first into warm water and then into ice water for as long as they could. Dr Osama Tashani, the study’s first author,