Be "mindful" of your meditation.

• Position: Your Life

Some 30 minutes of meditation daily may improve symptoms of anxiety and depression, suggests an analysis performed at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md., of previously published research.

"A lot of people use meditation, but it's not a practice considered part of mainstream medical therapy for anything. However, in our study, meditation appears to provide as much relief from some anxiety and depression symptoms as what other studies have found from antidepressants," relates Madhav Goyal, assistant professor in the Division of General Internal Medicine.

These patients, however, did not typically have full-blown anxiety or depression. The researchers evaluated the degree to which those symptoms changed in people who had a variety of medical conditions, such as insomnia or fibromyalgia, although only a minority had been diagnosed with a mental illness.

Goyal and his colleagues found that so-called "mindfulness meditation"--a form of Buddhist self-awareness designed to focus precise, nonjudgmental attention to the moment at hand--also shows promise in alleviating some pain symptoms as well as...