section_path: Secular applications/Clinical
section_name: Clinical
paragraph_text: Clinical
  
  Since the 1970s, clinical psychology and psychiatry have developed meditation techniques for numerous psychological conditions. Mindfulness practice is employed in psychology to alleviate mental and physical conditions, such as affecting the endocrine system therefore reducing depression, and helping to alleviate stress, and anxiety. Mindfulness is also used as a form of interventional therapy in the treatment of addiction including drug addiction, although the quantity and quality of evidence based research has been poor.
  
  The US National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health states that "Meditation and mindfulness practices may have a variety of health benefits and may help people improve the quality of their lives. Recent studies have investigated if meditation or mindfulness helps people manage anxiety, stress, depression, pain, or symptoms related to withdrawal from nicotine, alcohol, or opioids." However, the NCCIC goes on to caution that, "results from the studies have been difficult to analyze and may have been interpreted too optimistically."
  
  A 2014 review found that practice of mindfulness meditation for two to six months by people undergoing long-term psychiatric or medical therapy could produce moderate improvements in pain management, anxiety, depression. In 2017, the American Heart Association issued a scientific statement that meditation may be a reasonable adjunct practice and intervention to help reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases, with the qualification that meditation needs to be better defined in higher-quality clinical research of these disorders. Recent findings have also found evidence of meditation affecting migraines in adults. Mindfulness meditation may allow for a decrease in migraine episodes, and a drop in migraine medication usage.
  
  Early low-quality and low- quantity evidence indicates that the mechanism of meditation may help with irritable bowel syndrome, insomnia, cognitive decline in the elderly, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Sitting in silence, body scan meditation and concentrating on breathing was shown in a 2016 review to moderately decrease symptoms of PTSD and depression in war veterans and creating resilience to stresses in active service. Researchers have found that participating in mindfulness meditation can aid insomnia patients by improving sleep quality and total wake time. Mindfulness meditation is a supportive therapy that aides in the treatment for patients diagnosed with insomnia.