[Steven here. I wrote the paper.] No, there hasn't. Vipassana courses generally reject applications from anyone with clinical depression or anxiety as the meditation practice is not meant to "heal" anything but also because it can be a bit intense for anyone... much less someone with a clinical mental health issue.

There are exceptions. I volunteered for a 10-day course in Gujarat last year and 3 of the men attending had clinical depression. A friend of mine has a very serious history of Bipolar Disorder; she was rejected from her first course application but permitted into her second. In all 4 cases, the individual needs a personal interview with the area teacher and a recommendation from that teacher before they are permitted to take the course.

The black-and-white line is "are you medicated?" — medicine is permitted on Vipassana courses with the permission of the teacher but painkillers, antidepressants, and anti-anxiety meds are not allowed for obvious reasons.

This makes such a study (scientifically) impossible; the applicants are heavily filtered so the sample has quite a significant bias. Positive conclusions would also be dangerous: It could be a very bad scene if someone with a very deep psychological issue lied to attend a course because of its supposedly scientific benefits, found in students with much milder mental health issues.

For what it's worth, in these anecdotal cases I'm aware of, everyone found the practice to be extremely beneficial. Zazen, which in most teachings is also a nervous-system-focused meditation, can also be helpful for people with clinical depression.

I was not considered to be someone with a severe mental illness but ended up developing an intense depersonalization + somatoform disorder during a 10 day retreat that I am still struggling to recover from 2 years later. The staff there refused to let me talk to a doctor who was also at the retreat or to call my parents without listening in on the conversation, which made me extremely uncomfortable and caused me to stay there longer than I should have. By the end of it they continued to insist that the Vipassana was the way to fix my problems instead of advocating that I see a doctor.

My experience was an outlier but I feel that for many people an experience like this can do more harm than good. Isolation and sensory deprivation for 10 days is generally not healthy, when we do that to people in prison it can be considered cruel and unusual punishment. I don't think they did a very good job of encouraging those who were having issues to leave and instead made me want to try and 'power' through what I was going through rather than recognizing it as a serious issue.

The way the class is structured is fundamentally depersonalizing- every night they have you watch video lectures that I found to get increasingly bizarre and cult-like, subjecting you over and over to the notion that the Vipassana method is the way to deal with all suffering and eventually talking about how you can manipulate quantum energy in your body and other crazy shit. It was doubly disorienting to be doing this while eating a low-protein vegetarian diet for the first time

There are many, many others who have had negative, damaging experiences like me and the issue is waved away saying "they were already mentally ill and shouldn't have gone" but the fact there are many other ways to get the benefits that meditation offers in a way that doesn't present the risk of manifesting latent mental illnesses.

I really do not believe a 10 day retreat should even be offered to beginners and if so it should be less dogmatic and more sensitive to the possibility that it can be dangerous to certain personalities

I am quite certain there are a number of 10-day retreats that don't go into the cult-like/dogmatic aspects you describe here (that meditation is a cure and controlling body energy and all that) and would be more free about allowing anyone to leave and/or see a doctor.

I have not been to one myself, but I have read countless recollections of others' experiences, and a focus on caring for those attending is often a priority. Your experience sounds like the opposite of that, and as you've said, there are others with similar negative experiences too.

It's sad that it's out there, because I think there are plenty of 10-day retreats that wouldn't be such a problem, but maybe they should be required to be more upfront in setting expectations and better screen for potential hazards.

If you don't mind me asking, who was the speaker in those videos? Did your center have a specific "lineage" or "school" of Buddhism? Was it Goenka by chance?

> There are many, many others who have had negative, damaging experiences like me

Interesting, thanks for shedding some light from a very different perspective. I’m sorry you had to go through this and I hope you will be able to recover quickly.

Can you substantiate the claim or point to more information about a negative experience that came through Vipassana?

Thanks for sharing your experience, I'll steer clear and inform my friends to be weary.

I can see this being beneficial to try before going the antidepressant meds route if given the opportunity. Are there any 10 day retreats in the US? This sounds like a great service to have a retreat in the mountains somewhere in the states for those without the means to travel abroad. Thanks for writing this guide, I may try it.

I heard dissociative or hallucinogenic substances are great for mild depression/anxiety. What are your thoughts on trying those substances to experience a deeper understanding of ones body/world?

I don't think they allow people who have depression to join this course as this is pretty intensive.

Some of the best long time meditators who stumbled upon this path and stuck with it had depression.

The benefits that a regular person gets initially while meditating are pretty cool but not life changing. Like, you tend to get up and clean your room, file for taxes way before the deadline, do your chores without them feeling like chores etc. You also don't react automatically with annoyance etc. Again, cool benefits but not life changing. This is the reason why its hard to maintain regular practice.

But if you have depression, the difference that meditation makes in your life could be large ( Hypothesising) so you have more incentive to stick to the practice and over the years it all adds up and your quality of life might end up even better than those who did not have depression in the first place. Again, this is just my thinking and I am not sure.

If you have depression, you might consider taking some other mindfulness course to get a feel for it.

Arguably, one of the primary driving forces for the popularity of mindfulness in the west was the work done by Joh Kabat-Zinn with Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR).

I'll check it out, thanks for the info.