Effect of Rajyoga Meditation on Affective, Cognitive and Somatic Clusters of Depression

A WHO study based on interviews of 89, 000 people in 18 different countries by 20 different researchers says that nearly 121 million people are affected by depression worldwide. Meditation has shown a number of positive effects on physiology of human mind. It has shown to reduce the depression levels in humans giving a positive aspect of living.

The study was conducted on 56 healthy subjects (29 meditators and 27 non meditators). They were further categorized into two groups on the basis of time period for which they have been doing meditation. All the subjects were asked to fill the Beck's Depression Inventory.

We found that there was significant difference in depression levels in meditators and non-meditators. Group of meditators had much lesser depression or was not suffering from any kind of depression. It was also concluded that more the years of practice, lesser is the depression. We found that results were highly significant in affective cluster in meditators who were practicing meditation for more than 10 years and also significant in meditators practicing meditation for 2–5 years.

Cognitive cluster also gave significant results in case of group practicing meditation for more than 10 years but not significant in case of meditators practicing meditation for 2–5 years. Somatic cluster did not give any significant result in any group. With the help of Beck's Depression Inventory (BDI), we concluded that Rajyoga is a powerful tool for coping up with depression, especially the affective cluster of depression.