Is there a “dark side to meditation“? If so, what does this mean for the science of meditation and how we think about how the mind works?
Meditation became a buzzword in recent years and machine to generate profits. Mindfulness became a product to sell, changing the primary purpose and context for which it had been practiced for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Many publications, apps, training sessions, and retreats in Bali offer life-changing outcomes. This narrative paints a very lucrative picture for corporations, but at the same time, it poses a threat to well-being, as it usually goes hand in hand with communicating only positive outcomes.
According to the Varieties of Contemplative Experience study, around 5% of the population in the USA practices some form of meditation, with a significant yearly increase of 5,6% (Lindahl et al., 2017). There is an important question that is often skipped: can a practice presented as universally safe and with therapeutic benefits also be harmful? The evidence suggests the answer is yes.
A Silence in the research
The researchers in their publications focus mainly on the benefits of meditation. A systematic review published in Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica found that the vast majority of meditation studies (over 75%) do not actively assess adverse effects at all. They acknowledge it only when participants voluntarily raise the topic of the negative effects (Farias et al., 2020).
This is a profound gap. Passive monitoring is insufficient because participants are unlikely to report difficulties unless they are directly asked. Why? Psychological phenomena like shaping the authority effect or the expectation of positive outcomes play a large role (Lindahl et al., 2017).
When researchers do ask directly, a different picture emerges. Farias and colleagues reviewed 83 studies and found that 65% reported at least one type of meditation-related adverse event, with an overall prevalence of 8.3%, rising to 33.2% in observational studies (Farias et al., 2020). The VCE study, based on qualitative interviews with 60 Western Buddhist meditators and 32 expert teachers and clinicians, identified 59 distinct categories of challenging or distressing experiences across seven domains: cognitive, perceptual, affective, somatic, conative, sense of self, and social. 73% of participants reported moderate to severe functional impairment in at least one domain, 17% reported suicidal thoughts, and 17% required inpatient hospitalization (Lindahl et al., 2017). These are the consequences that are very rarely mentioned in the public sphere.
Clinical risks
It can be said that the most clinically significant risk of meditation is triggering or surfacing buried or unconscious trauma, unresolved psychological issues, and mental health problems. Practices like body scanning and breath work bring attention to reading body signals and focus on the inner self. For individuals with traumatic experiences, this inward focus can trigger re-experiencing it and an increase in anxiety (Kaselionyte & Gumley, 2018).
The VCE study found that re-experiencing trauma was reported by 43% of practitioners. It stands as a contrary to common perception of meditation as a tool to manage stress and anxiety. Without professional psychological support, such as a counselor or a therapist, it can create the opposite effect of the desired and promised outcome.
Farias et al. documented a broader clinical spectrum of adverse events, including meditation-induced psychosis, depersonalization, mania, and seizures (Farias et al., 2020). What is even more important, the review found that adverse events can occur even in individuals without any previous mental health problems.
The ambition and motivation trap
Other concerns relate to motivation and agency of practitioners. Mindfulness practice, commercialized in the secular Western world, encourages observing thoughts and feelings without judgment, identifying with them, and letting them pass like clouds in the sky. This can bring immense value for self-development. But it can also become a form of psychological disengagement from problems or situations that require taking action.
By training to accept present-moment experience as it is, meditation can definitely reduce the drive to change things that should be changed, such as a toxic workplace, a relationship, or unpleasant feelings of confrontation and rejection. The VCE study identified potential changes in motivation to pursue goals and anhedonia as effects of meditation practice (Lindahl et al., 2017).
A meditator who has “meditated away” the discomfort of a problem without engaging with its underlying cause may appear calm but remain stuck, and face negative long-term consequences of not changing the status quo. The relationship between emotional regulation and motivated behavior is not linear. Decreased reactivity can also trigger decreased agency.
Neurodiversity challenges
The most popular, accessible formats of meditation nowadays, besides applications, are eight-week MBSR programs, silent retreats, and guided body scans, which are designed for those who can focus, tolerate silence, and sit still for hours. For practitioners with ADHD or other forms of neurodiversity, these formats can be challenging or even counterproductive. The experience of failure often starts early and discourages continued effort.
As highlighted in insights by Essence Holistic Health (2025), body-scan meditation in participants with ADHD found that seated positions commonly used during meditation can significantly increase the difficulty of practice for this group. The ADHD brain constantly seeks dopamine to regulate attention and hyperactivity. In this case, the rules of not moving and staying silent are interpreted by the brain as understimulation and require more effort to overcome.
The result is that people with ADHD frequently report feeling worse after attempting traditional meditation. There are adverse effects like being more restless, being self-critical, and feeling not good enough to do a simple meditation, which is like asking to wear too small shoes and run a marathon for a neurodivergent brain.
One of the most intensive and widely practiced meditation formats in the world is a 10-day Vipassana retreat, which is a silent retreat with ten hours per day of meditation and sitting still. For people who already struggle to sustain focused attention for a few minutes, this format is an extreme mismatch.
The structure of Vipassana- prolonged stillness, absence of sensory stimuli, no conversations or access to phone- is precisely the condition most likely to dysregulate an ADHD nervous system, which depends on stimulation, movement, novelty, and social feedback to function. As a consequence, it might cause mental health problems and a decrease in self-confidence.
Mental health issues
The Vipassana format poses documented risks for individuals with pre-existing mental health issues. There are documented cases of serious psychological deterioration during or after Goenka retreats, including hospitalizations in psychiatric units.
An NPR investigation in 2024 discovered that two families reported that their loved ones took their own lives in the aftermath (Noguchi, 2024). These are extreme outcomes, but they are not isolated. The conditions of intensive retreat, like lack of sensory stimulation, isolation from the outside world, extremely long introspection, and the absence of clinical support on the spot, create circumstances under which pre-existing problems can escalate very quickly.
Most of the time, there is no trained professional available to recognize them and respond appropriately. Spending days in silence with your own thoughts, if you have unresolved mental health issues or a propensity for depression or anxiety, might be harmful (Van Gordon et al., 2017).
The clinical literature supports this concern. The Farias et al. systematic review documented cases of meditation-induced mania, psychosis, and severe depersonalization (Farias et al., 2020). This is not an argument that Vipassana or other intensive practices should be banned, nor do they have no value. Many practitioners describe them as positive and transformative. The point is that they are powerful interventions, not just SPA-like experiences to be marketed to the general public without clinical screening, informed risks, or trained mental health support on site.
Emotional Blunting and the Limits of Detachment
Mindfulness practices encourage a degree of detachment from emotions by observing them rather than being swept away by them. In many contexts, this is clinically beneficial, helps regulate emotions, and cuts to a certain extent rumination.
But practitioners in the VCE study also reported affective flattening which is a limiting intensity of experienced emotions or even almost absence of emotions (Lindahl et al., 2017). As a result, they reported reduced empathy and emotional coldness in relationships, which stands in the opposite of compassion.
This raises a difficult, ethical question about emotional regulation. The emotional dysregulation, including excessive reactivity, impulsivity, and rumination, is treated as the pathology. Yet emotion is not merely noise to be reduced, but to consider to what extent it’s beneficial, and to what extent it becomes an adverse.
Emotions like sadness, anger, and fear are adaptive responses and feedback about our values, crucial events in life, and help to adjust. For instance, sadness can bring people closer, anger helps to protect boundaries, and fear protects from taking harmful actions.
The practitioner who systematically trains to distance themselves from emotion may, over time, not build psychological resilience but psychological numbness. Learning to observe emotions without processing and experiencing them may result in no development of flexibility that genuine emotional maturity requires.
Conclusion
Meditation is not a magic pill that should be sold universally without a prescription, because adverse events are more common and dangerous, as people might know. Meditation practice is very valuable and beneficial, but ethically and morally meditation requires full transparency and clear guidelines: about who it is appropriate for, in what doses, and frequency, under what conditions, and including adaptations for individual differences. It also means that the scientific word of meditation must move beyond a sales persona, demonstrating only benefits and developing a more honest approach. Only then can individuals decide consciously about meditation practice, having the full picture.
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References
- Essence Holistic Health. (2025, October 21). Let’s talk: Adapting mindfulness meditation for neurodivergents. Holistic Health Blog. https://essenceholistichealth.com/blog/f/lets-talk-adapting-mindfulness-meditation-for-neurodivergents
- Farias, M., Maraldi, E., Wallenkampf, K. C., & Lucchetti, G. (2020). Adverse events in meditation practices and meditation-based therapies: A systematic review. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 142(5), 374–393. https://doi.org/10.1111/acps.13225
- Kaselionyte, J., & Gumley, A. (2018). “It’s like a charge- either fuses you or burns you out”: An interpretative phenomenological analysis of extreme mental states in meditation context. Mental Health, Religion, and Culture. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322533137
- Noguchi, Y. (2024, February 12). For some, meditation retreats can lead to a mental health crisis. NPR.https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/02/12/1230042456/meditation-retreat-mental-health-crisis-risks
- Lindahl, J. R., Fisher, N. E., Cooper, D. J., Rosen, R. K., & Britton, W. B. (2017). The varieties of contemplative experience: A mixed-methods study of meditation-related challenges in Western Buddhists. PLOS ONE, 12(5), e0176239. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0176239
- Van Gordon, W., Shonin, E., & Garcia-Campayo, J. (2017). Are there adverse effects associated with mindfulness? The Lancet Psychiatry, 4(7), 597–598.
Author:
Hi, I’m Magda Kern. I’m a psychologist, the top 11 public speaking coach worldwide, a lecturer, working for companies from the Fortune 500 list, a business trainer with 12 years of experience, a TEDx coach, and an ex-vocalist based in Switzerland. I help people prepare and deliver unforgettable presentations and deal with stress.