Personalized meditations are a new tool for mental health support
There is a rapidly growing interest in mental health care in the United States, with the percentage of adults utilizing mental health care increasing by more than 50% over the last 20 years and about 1 in 5 of Americans now seeking some type of mental health treatment annually.
Meditation practice follows a similar trend, with nearly 1 in 5 Americans using meditation annually, more than doubling the rate from 20 years ago.
To me, these statistics both demonstrate increasing prioritization of mental health, as well as the variety in the types of treatment modalities people prefer.
When people first hear about Wellness AI's combination of AI therapy and personalized meditations, they often ask two questions:
Why combine therapy with meditation?
Why should meditations be personalized?
Before addressing these questions, it's worth noting that meditation, like therapy, is fundamentally a tool for mental health and personal growth. Yet, while it's universally accepted that therapy should be personalized - no one would suggest that a therapist should give identical advice to every client - we've somehow accepted a one-size-fits-all approach to meditation.
Let me share why these tools not only go hand in hand, but how the unique combination in the Wellness AI app opens up entirely new avenues for personalized mental health support.
The therapeutic value of mindfulness and meditation practices
There is a growing body of evidence for the therapeutic benefits of meditation.
Meta-analyses have shown mindfulness meditation programs been shown to improve anxiety, depression, pain and overall well-being, and that mindfulness-based therapy has significant positive impacts on anxiety, depression, and stress.
Gratitude practices have been associated with positive affect, life satisfaction, and overall psychological well-being, as well as decreases in depressive symptoms.
A variety of other meditation techniques used in Wellness AI have demonstrated positive impacts on psychological well being. For example, Meta-analyses showing the benefits of mindfulness often include related meditation techniques such as grounding meditations, breathwork, or body-scan meditation. And loving kindness meditation has been shown to increase positive emotions such as gratitude and well being and to decrease symptoms of negative emotions such as depression when combined with treatments such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).
So, the evidence supporting meditation practice for mental health is fairly well established. But the question remains: how should one approach meditation in light of their unique personality, experiences, and preferences?
Why personalization matters for guided meditations
Personalized meditations provide an opportunity to build on traditional guided meditation practices, by:
1) Applying meditation techniques to a user’s unique life situation. For example, by identifying specific thought patterns for the user during a mindfulness meditation, or mentioning an important person in their life during the user’s gratitude practice.
Generic meditation: "bring to mind someone in your life who you care for deeply, be it a parent, a spouse, or a child".
Personalized meditation: "bring to mind your partner, and the years that you've shared"
2) Identifying, in the moment, meditation techniques that are relevant to the emotions a person is experiencing. For example, someone feeling extreme disappointment in their life might get immediate benefit from a self-compassion or gratitude meditation. But they might not be aware of these techniques, or how to apply them to their own situation.
3) Combining meditation with techniques from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). For example, by using metaphor as a cognitive reframing technique during a guided visualization, or drawing from Stoic meditations by reframing a hurdle in a user’s life using malorum præmeditatio.
Generic meditation: "let go of any thoughts or worries you may have"
Personalized meditation: "acknowledge any lingering stress, and recognize its impermanence, like a passing ripple on a lake"
Harnessing context for better AI meditation
I'm an avid supporter of all types of meditation practice, and think it's a powerful and convenient tool for mental healthcare. I've done silent meditation, and have used other meditation apps with meditations targeting a general audience. However, a limitation of these approaches is that they are one-size fits all. Just as with therapy, meditation is a very personal experience, and there will be a variety of tastes across individuals.
Currently, the best approach for those interested in meditation is to seek out pre-recorded guided meditations from practitioners using techniques that work well for them. In the case of mobile apps or online videos, this typically involves searching through large libraries of material to find the right combination of voice, technique, and style, for what they are looking for in that moment.
With Wellness AI, we are able leverage a users entire history within the app to create personalized AI meditations, giving it the following advantages:
It generates each meditation for you, on the fly
It's aware of what's been on your mind from your therapeutic chats
This enables a meditation system that previously wasn't possible, with the following features:
Rather than searching through a library of existing meditations, you can simply ask for whatever meditation technique or topic you want in that moment (If you don't feel like requesting a specific type of meditation, you can let the system design one for you)
You get to choose from a selection of voices, background audio, and meditation lengths, to suit your preferences and current mood
You can reflect on themes that were surfaced in therapy sessions, helping to apply specific mental health techniques in another modality
Wellness AI knows your life circumstances, and can craft a meditation around that. For example, if you've been discussing a bout of insomnia due to stress at work, it can create a guided sleep meditation to fit that exact circumstance. See the Wellness AI demo page for examples of personalized meditations to help with sleep issues, gratitude, and work anxiety.
Furthermore, due to our unique feedback system, it will learn about your meditation preferences over time and improve your experience.
Wrapping it all up
The growing interest in both therapy and meditation shows that people are increasingly open to different approaches for mental health support. What's exciting about AI technology is that we can now combine these approaches in ways that weren't previously possible.
By creating personalized AI meditations that understand your context and adapt to your preferences, Wellness AI represents a step forward in making mental health support more personalized, accessible, and effective for everyone.
-Tim
Founder & Developer, Wellness AI
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