Reducing stress of cancer patients through Vipassana meditation

Abstract

Reducing psychosocial stress is a great social service for cancer patients. Reduction of stress facilitates success in counselling. In this direction meditation is a method through which one can have awareness of positive and negative mental states. Daily practice of meditation can help cancer patients cope with the stressful situations which they feel in their everyday situations. Present research would be a step ahead to show that pharmacological treatment is not the only remedy for cancer but some other supportive techniques are also available which can help in managing and living with the cancer disease without any side effects. So, an effort was made to study the effect of Vipassana Meditation in reducing psychosocial stress among cancer patients. The study was conducted on a sample of 30 subjects in the age range of 40–50 years. Subjects were categorized into two groups (experimental group and control group), with 15 subjects in each group. Cancer patients were included in both the groups. Cancer was diagnosed by the physician. Before starting the intervention programme, for the experimental group, subjects were trained in Vipassana Meditation for one month and were asked to practice meditation for one month. The control group subjects were not given any type of intervention. For measuring psychosocial stress, the ICMR Psychosocial Stressor questionnaire was used. Pre and post data was compared with the help of the Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test. Z value was calculated for psychosocial stress in both the groups. A significant difference was found between the pre and post scores of psychosocial stress in the experimental group (Z =3.41, p< .01) in comparison to the control group (Z =0.33). Further, results show the significant reduction in the scores of psychosocial stress in the experimental group whereas no significant reduction was found in the control group. So, it can be said that there is a significant positive effect of Vipassana Meditation in reducing psychosocial stress among cancer patients. Practicing Vipassana Meditation is the right way of living, in illness and in health.