Spirituality Plays a Role in Preventing Depression: Study

Spirituality Plays a Role in Preventing Depression: StudySubmitted by Pallavi Sharma on Sat, 01/18/2014 - 08:19 

A new research has come up with findings to suggest that meditation and other such spiritual or religious practices have a role to play in preventing depression. Columbia University research team has revealed after noticing that thickening of brain cortex because of such practices lead to prevent depression.
Lisa Miller is the director of Clinical Psychology as well as the Spirituality Mind Body Institute at Teachers College, Columbia University. The study led her to a conclusion that participants who gave high importance of religion or spirituality had thicker cortices compared to those who did not.
Findings hold significant importance for people with family history of mental illnesses. The study saw people at high risk of developing depression had thinning cortexes precisely in the same regions of the brains where the spiritual participants had thickened cortexes.

Professor Miller said further researches are necessary. However, the results of the study have proved that spirituality or religion can play a vital role to have people stay protected from depression.
“The new study links this extremely large protective benefit of spirituality or religion to previous studies which identified large expanses of cortical thinning in specific regions of the brain in adult offspring of families at high risk for major depression”, Miller said.