Ricky Spidalieri
University 112
Ethical Reasoning Paper
12/2/14
Meditation: the best form of stress relief
College is one of the most stressful times in a person’s life. Whether there’s a
paper due, a project, or exam, college students face stressful situations constantly
throughout their studies. Anxiety is often treated with medicines in order to quickly fix
the problem, while completely passing over the underlying problem in the first place.
With meditation being practiced throughout the world, it’s slowly making its way into
modern western society. With routine meditation, anxiety and depression can be treated
individually and strengthen the meditator’s skills at dealing with and handling stress, and
can make anyone who practices it life better. Because of all the benefits it offers,
meditation should be prioritized for stress relief amongst college students.
Reliance on anxiety medicine can consequently cause later side effects.
Continuous use of anxiety medicines such as SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake
inhibitors) can end up harming the user by developing a dependence for the medicine.
With a constant intake of the medicine, the drug can cause the user to take more of it in
order to feel the original effects cause the antidepressant may lose its original effect after
months or years of use, usually due to the brain becoming less responsive to it, otherwise
known as building a tolerance (“What are the,” 2005). Lennard J. Davis (2010), a
professor at the University of Illinois in the college of applied health sciences, talks about
how we as a society are becoming more dependent on medicine and how we are an
“over-medicated society”. Davis (2010) suggests that a reason we have become so reliant
on medicines like SSRIs, is because taking a pill is much easier and faster than to actually
take the time and effort to explore the reasons for an individual’s distress.
People often take the easier option of just simply taking a pill every morning and
their anxiety reduces, which in extreme cases of anxiety, is clinically tested to be the best
option, but on the scale of average amounts of anxiety, medicine can cause unnecessary
side effects when there is another, safer option. SSRIs, if stopped being taken, can put the
user through withdrawal of the drug making them have certain symptoms like dizziness,
loss of coordination, blurred vision, insomnia, irritability, and anxiety (“What are the,”
2005). The term “discontinuation syndrome” is more often used than “withdrawal” when
referring to someone that stops taking a medicine because withdrawal is more often
associated with addiction, but that’s exactly what it is. The Oxford English Dictionary
defines addiction as, “The state or condition of being dedicated or devoted to a thing;
adherence or attachment, especially of an immoderate or compulsive kind,” which
describes any “devotion” to a medicine or drug, whether it’s prescribed or illegal. Taking
these medicines is often more of a quick and easy solution to a problem with a long-term
underlying effect. People develop a reliance to these drugs which can end up hurting
them over time, which can be especially harmful to college students.
Consistent meditation is a general peace of mind and natural anxiety relief
method. With proper knowledge and practice, meditation can become a routine that can
help relieve stress not only for short-term relief, but also long-term relief as well. In 2011,
Burns, Lee, and Brown, conducted an experiment with college students and their levels of
stress, anxiety, depression, and perfectionism. The goal was to track the levels of these
problems for the students as they practiced a meditation routine throughout the semester
(p. 137). The study resulted in a decrease in stress, anxiety, depression, and perfectionism
throughout the students (p. 138), showing that with a meditation routine, stress and
anxiety, depression, and even perfectionism can be reduced throughout a college student
demographic. Kristin Barker (2014), a professor at the University of New Mexico,
describes how meditation can help an individual with practice. Not only does it help
temporarily reduce stress nearly immediately, but it can also improve overall coping
skills with stress for the future.
Meditation promotes mindfulness and insight, which can help improve problemsolving skills. Meditation is widely believed in cultures such as Buddhism and Taoism to
lead to personal insight. With the relaxation of your mind and body, the meditator can
focus on clearing their mind, which can relax them, and allow for them to think more
clearly. A Chinese study gave college students a set of critical thinking questions to be
completed in a certain amount of time. The students attempted as many as they could and
after the time, were given a relaxation period where some would meditate and others
would just have a break. After the break, the students were then given the questions that
they couldn’t previously answer. Jun Ren et al. (2011) hypothesized that after a period of
meditation opposed to a break, students would be able to complete the problems that they
previously couldn’t because meditating could make them relax and become more
insightful. Although the response times of the students didn’t differ much, the students
who meditated were able to correctly complete more of the questions than the students
who didn’t meditate. This study helps support the claim that relaxation cannot only relax
you, but by doing so, increase your critical thinking, and problem solving skills.
Meditation is universally practiced throughout many cultures and religions with
many benefits. Over the years, it has become increasingly popular in western society, but
it still holds a sort of stigma surrounding it. In 2007, Vohra-Gupta, Russell, and Lo wrote
that meditation is a staple in many cultures and religions, and that it has slowly become
more popular in modern America, which is a good thing due to the benefits it provides to
anyone who practices it. The process of meditation, in most forms, is mainly to focus on
breathing. The meditator is supposed to sit up straight, and breath in and out in a constant
rhythm. By continuously doing this, outside thoughts are either able to be subsided from
your mind, or focused on in a new light. By preoccupying the mind with something as
simple as breathing, the meditator can enter a sort of trance where the rhythm of the
breath won’t stop, but even then it eventually won’t have to be constantly thought about,
leaving the mind open to focus on other things. The goal of meditation in Buddhism is to
reach a state called enlightenment. It takes years of practice and extreme amounts of
focus in order to achieve it, but enlightenment is the act of completely clearing your
mind. With serious discipline, it can be achieved, and is often found to be a life-changing
experience. Not only is meditation a powerful, individual activity, it also only costs time,
leaving money available to students rather than potentially spending them on medicine or
therapy to treat something as easy to fix and as common as stress.
With the promotion of meditation on college campuses, life and overall wellbeing
of college students can be improved. Meditation is a staple in certain religions and is even
practiced non-religiously in many cultures across the world. With the stigma it has gained
over the years, it has also gained a positive reputation here in America, and is slowly
gaining more with time. Stress affects everybody’s life at some point or another, and if
the person is either new to stressful situations, or just overwhelmed by them in general,
meditation is the perfect solution. Meditation should be promoted across college
campuses in hopes of more college students practicing it. Too many students suffer from
anxiety too often to not have a sort of solution, and that’s why meditation should be
campaigned for by the college’s counseling services or any wellbeing resource. Its
numerous benefits would allow better handling of stress both immediately and in the
future, clearer and more concise thinking, and an overall sense of relaxation. Meditation
should be advocated across the nation on college campuses to improve the lives of
students dealing with stress, which is unfortunately a large number. It should take the
place of anxiety medicines for students to reduce the dependence on them and hopefully
start a more actively conscious society. Since stress affects everyone at some point, it
should be treated as a temporary problem rather than a long-term one with a consistent
meditation routine in order to enhance the lives of everybody who practices it.
References:
Alyssa M. Lederer MPH, CHES & Susan E. Middlestadt PhD (2014). Beliefs
About Meditating Among University Students, Faculty, and Staff: A TheoryBased Salient Belief Elicitation. Journal of American College Health, 62:6,
360-369. doi: 10.1080/07448481.2014.907296
Baer, Ruth A.; Carmondy, James; Hunsinger, Matthew (2012). Weekly Change in
Mindfulness and Perceived Stress in a Mindfulness-Based Stress
Reduction Program. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 68:7, 755-765. doi:
10.1002/jclp.21865
Barker, Kristin K. (2014). Mindfulness Meditation: Do-it-yourself medicalization of
every moment. Social Science & Medicine, 106. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.
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Birx, Ellen (2013). A comparative concept analysis of centring vs. opening
Meditation processes in health care. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 69:8.
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Burns, Jaimie L. ; Lee, Randolph M. ; Brown, Lauren J. (2011). The Effect of
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Perfectionism in a College Population. Journal of College Student
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Davis, D. L. (2010, January). Five Reasons Not to Take SSRIs. Retrieved from
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Kang, Yune Sik ; Choi, So Young ; Ryu, Eunjung (2009). The Effectiveness of a
stress coping program based on mindfulness meditation on the stress,
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