Efficacy of short term meditation as therapy for symptoms of stress

Stress is a pervasive problem in American life, and there is a need for a low cost, easily taught, convenient method of stress reduction. This research examined the efficacy of a six week meditation program in reducing stress levels. A generic, non-cultic 20 minute meditation was developed and taught to 31 University of Illinois students who promised to meditate daily for six weeks. Two control groups were used: n = 33 of prospective meditators and n = 33 of students not interested in meditation whose scores were examined to detect population differences in stress levels. Participants were administered the College Adjustment Rating Scale (Zitzow, 1984) on which subjects self-rated stress levels in Academic, Social, Personal, Family/Home, and Total categories. This test was given as a Pretest and as a Posttest. Meditating subjects significantly reduced stress scores in every category with Total Change means of -60.0645 for Group 1 and +13.8485 for Group 2 (p $<$.0001). Men and women differed on change scores in only one category, Change: Social (p $<$.014). No Group x Sex interactions were present. Compliance with meditation instructions was found to have an inverse relationship to reduction of stress scores on the Social subscale, but to have no relationship to other subscales. Meditation on three of the subscales and on the Total scale strongly suggests that an expectation effect may account for the reduction of stress scores among meditators.U of I OnlyETDs are only available to UIUC Users without author permissio