Picture this: Your work or school life has greatly taken a toll on your mental health, and you see a drop in your professional or academic performance due to the stress. You embarrassedly visit a therapist to get rid of this problem as soon as possible, and your therapist prescribes one thing: mindfulness, the supposed cure-all for declining mental health. You excitedly go home and open the mindfulness app you downloaded. Your anxiety and stress will soon disappear!

Or so you thought.

As you are “meditating,” sitting down, eyes closed, listening to an audio of a person droning on and on about how mindfulness is so good for you, you become bored, and realize these twenty or so minutes of doing absolutely nothing is going to achieve absolutely nothing. You repeat this cycle for a year, and your stress is still omnipresent, if not even more than before. 

Yet, why is this practice so popular?

The perceived effect of mindfulness is that through focusing on the present, your problems automatically vanish, and the stress, anxiety, and depression you accumulated will no longer affect you. This practice seems like a perfect remedy, and the millions of Americans suffering from mental health disorders like Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Major Depressive Disorder believe this too. They buy the apps and books sold by companies solely wishing to capitalize on these beliefs that practicing mindfulness will lead you to success, and expect the results they were promised. 

It’s not as if mindfulness is a complete waste of time for anybody who chooses to practice it. Factors such as time of day and amount of time doing a focused activity would be able to benefit the individual who feels as if they simply can’t relieve themselves of chronic stress or anxiety. However, in today’s time, shelves of mindfulness books cramp bookstores, each book brandishing a supposedly-serene title directed toward advertising the “inner peace” you so desire. However, these books aren’t directed toward just you or individuals with anxiety or depression that can be treated with mindfulness. Instead, they appeal to a larger audience that wants to simply find inner peace. Why is it that these books are so generalized?

Money.

Money is the primary drive for many of these authors to forget that mindfulness is a long-lasting practice that aims to help each individual based on their mental needs. These individuals, who likely aren’t licensed to endorse mindfulness like therapists would be, are blinded by the sole desire to capitalize on the struggles of the populace. They put on their saintly facade to only trick their audiences into practicing a mindfulness activity that will only shallowly help them, if at all. 

There’s nothing mindfulness can do that normal, everyday practices can’t. Mindfulness relaxes the body, and is usually done in a sitting or laid-down position. Why can’t you just sleep? Sleep has bountiful health benefits such as lowering your stress and sharpening your attention, so why not just do that? Mindfulness also involves you meditating by yourself in utter peace and quiet while you concentrate to relieve your depression. For people looking to mindfulness as a way to cure depression, they could not be further from the truth. Depression is caused by a lack of serotonin, a hormone in the body associated with happiness, and is largely influenced by genetics. Instead of trusting a person speaking to you through a mindfulness app you got from online, why not trust a psychiatrist who can offer therapy and provide medication and social relief? 

Supporters of practicing mindfulness like David Oscar of Psychreg (1) claim that mindfulness gives you more control over your emotions and regulates your moods. While this may be logical and even work for some people, each individual has their own way of being mindful, which may or may not be mentioned in today's mindfulness books, many of which are focused on making a profit. Mindfulness isn’t a complete hoax: the practice has lasted throughout the years, first performed by Asian monks, and it’s clear that something seems to have worked. But it is not a cure-all for individuals with mental disorders. Seeing a therapist if you have anxiety or depression and getting actual therapy or medication is the best way to ensure that you are properly treated, without having to waste hours of your life sitting down and doing nothing in hopes that all your problems will suddenly vanish. 

Mindfulness may have worked in the past because of more simplistic social interactions and daily struggles. And it may be true that individuals without clinical mental disorders can practice mindfulness to simply “be in the moment” and relax. However, in today’s society where mental disorders are more prevalent thanks to new technologies and social patterns, and the only forms of mindfulness are the ineffective ones found in capitalist-centered books, the technique is essentially useless at present, as you can get the benefits from mindfulness from basic activities like sleeping or hanging out with friends. 

Cited Source (David Oscar from PsychReg):

(1) psychreg.org/why-mindfulness-important/