Mindfulness, meditation and mental health

Some researchers have advocated the use of mindfulness based techniques to deal with affective disorders, for example there is an RCT that finds it effective against depression for women with fibromyalgia and also evidence of how meditation can help anxiety, stress or agoraphobia.
Closer to home, the Northern Ireland Health Service has brought in a Buddhist monk to provide mindfulness based "happiness classes". I don't know how accurate a description that is but Sammy Wilson MP is not a happy bunny.

kabat zinn on mindfulness

Cool lecture by Kabat-Zinn on Mindfulness originally presented to Google staff. Worth looking through the Google lectures channel. Michael has talked a lot about mindfulness here and we have even examined its relation to economic discounting. How peace of mind and ability to control one's thoughts interacts with the type of economic fluctuations we are seeing at the moment is something we should talk more about here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nwwKbM_vJc