Vol. 6, Issue 2, Part B (2020)

Objective: To study and examine the effectiveness of Meditation on stress levels of Medical students in an educational environment.

Methodology: A cross-sectional research using a standard Perceived Stress Questionnaire pertaining to the subjective perception of things in the educational environment leading to emotional stress such as workload, worries, tension, and harassment as well as joyful conditions. Overall 120 students from 1st, 2nd and final years of a Medical college in Rajkot, in the state of Gujarat, India participate in 3 hours (1 hour each day on 3 consecutive days) meditation workshop.

Results: The predominant themes represented are perceptions of the learning environment and clinical practice, coping, personal issues, balancing college work, and personal life. Mean Baseline stress scores of workload is higher for first and second-year students compared with final year students; Worries and Harassment score is higher in second-year students; Joy score is higher for first-year students; Tension score is higher in final year students. After meditation workshop, the mean decrease in workload, worries, tension and harassment score and mean increase in Joy score is observed in the participants.

Conclusion: The investigation on the effectiveness of Meditation as a mental and emotional support instrument to deal with and to mitigate stress reveals positive results. Based on these results, it is evident that meditation can be employed as a coping mechanism to deal with stress in an educational environment. Meditation may be considered for inclusion in the standard curriculum of Medical colleges.