Centering prayer in the treatment of bipolar disorder
1 Institute of Neurology and Neurosurgery, Havana, Cuba.
2 University of St. Thomas, Houston, Texas.
3 Contemplative Network, Houston, Texas.
4 University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, Texas.
Research Article
World Journal of Advanced Research and Reviews, 2024, 21(03), 2314–2323
Article DOI: 10.30574/wjarr.2024.21.3.0981
Publication history:
Received on 18 February 2024; revised on 26 March 2024; accepted on 28 March 2024
Abstract:
Bipolar Disorder (BD), formerly manic-depressive illness or manic depression, is a lifelong mood disorder and mental health condition that causes intense shifts in mood, energy levels, thinking patterns, and behavior. These shifts can last for hours, days, weeks, or months, interrupting the ability to carry out daily tasks. The condition is manageable with medications, talk therapy, lifestyle changes, and other treatments, but the therapy results are unreliable in many patients. Most faith traditions have two forms of prayer: discursive and contemplative. Most believers practice discursive prayer. Medical research has shown the statistical healing effects of discursive prayer, but there is considerably less research on contemplative prayer. Hesse reports a method of teaching CP by asking a volunteer to help demonstrate the analogy between human and Divine relationships in the following quoted phases., Therefore, we hypothesize that CP might produce a significant depression improvement in BP patients. Two neurologists double-blind diagnosed five patients complaining of BD and five normal subjects. All cases expressed their belief in God, so CP is prayer, not non-theistic meditation. Patients will be free of medication and selected during depressive episodes. Among the trait markers are frontal alpha asymmetry,55,56, and changes in frontal qEEG cordance. A very stable QEEG pattern, consisting of frontal alpha asymmetry, was observed in all five patients. Hence, this pattern was used to compare QEEG before and after CP. Our main result showed that the focal left frontal Alpha increment disappeared after CP. Conclusion: CP is a promising tool for treating depression, organizing the function interplay among brain networks that subserve Cognition-emotion interactions in the prefrontal cortex.
Keywords:
Bipolar depression; Centering prayer; Quantitative EEG; Prefrontal cortex.
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