Health Professional Wellbeing

Meditation is widely perceived as an effective method of reducing stress, and enhancing wellbeing. In Australia, a survey of a randomly selected but representative sample drawn from the general community (n=1,033) found that 11% of respondents had practiced meditation at least once. The Australian Community Survey found that 1.5 million Australians have tried Eastern meditation within 12 months of the time of the survey and that while 29% of Australians found prayer to be a source of peace and wellbeing, 24% used meditation for the same thing. Remarkably, the ACS reports that despite only about 20% of Australians attending church monthly or more often “around 33% of Australians pray or meditate at least weekly”.

This reflects trends identified by studies in other countries, such as the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s 2002 National Health Interview Survey administered to 31,000 representative adults, which showed that 8% of respondents had practiced meditation at some time.

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