Meditation harms employees too. That is what 83 scientific studies say.

Meditation has become a fixture on the agenda of almost every wellbeing program. And rightly so: the benefits are well documented. Less stress, better concentration, greater resilience. Employers who offer meditation do so out of genuine care for their people.

But there is something that is structurally overlooked in that care. And it is time we talked about it.

What science has known for years

In 2020, researcher Miguel Farias and his team published a systematic review in the leading journal Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica. They analysed 83 studies with a total of 6,703 participants. The conclusion was clear: 8.3% of meditators experience clinically relevant adverse effects. The most commonly reported are anxiety (found in 33% of the studies), depression (27%) and cognitive anomalies (25%). What makes this particularly concerning: adverse effects also occur in people with no prior mental health history.

This is not fringe research. It is a peer-reviewed systematic review with 167 citations.

When meditation disrupts daily life

Willoughby Britton, associate professor of psychiatry at Brown University, is the world's most specialised researcher in this field. She developed a validated 44-item interview to actively and systematically measure adverse effects, administered by an independent assessor. Her findings from a study of 96 participants in an eight-week mindfulness programme were published in Clinical Psychological Science and have since accumulated 170 citations.

What she found:

58% of participants experienced a negative, unpleasant experience. 37% had a negative impact on daily functioning, such as at work, in relationships or in sleep. 6 to 14% were still experiencing these effects after more than one month.

The most common effects with functional impact are hyperarousal (heightened anxiety, sleep problems, irritability), dissociation (emotional numbness, a feeling of not being present in one's own body) and the unexpected resurfacing of traumatic memories.

Britton compares meditation to aspirin. Effective and widely applicable, but with side effects that providers are expected to know, communicate and monitor. We do not hand out aspirin without a package insert. With meditation, we do.

Who is at greater risk?

Not everyone responds to meditation in the same way, and some employees are more vulnerable than others. Three groups deserve particular attention.

People with a trauma history. Canby et al. demonstrated in 2025 in PLOS ONE that people with a trauma history or subclinical PTSD symptoms significantly more often experience adverse effects and respond less well to mindfulness programmes for depression. People with adverse childhood experiences. Goldberg et al. found in a population-based study of 434 meditators that those who had negative experiences in childhood face an elevated risk of persistent adverse effects. People who meditate intensively or without guidance. Farias et al. confirms that intensive retreats and unsupervised practice substantially increase the likelihood of adverse effects.

The problem is that these employees are not identifiable from their CV. They are simply sitting in your programme.

What you can do differently as an organisation

The solution is not to stop offering meditation. The solution is to treat it like any other therapeutic instrument: with accountability, care and a support structure. Based on research by Matko et al. (2025), Baer et al. (2019) and Canby et al. (2025), there are five concrete steps that make a difference.

First: screen participants before they start. Ask about trauma, PTSD and psychological vulnerability. This is standard practice in psychotherapy, but almost entirely absent from workplace meditation programmes. The meditation teacher must work in a trauma-informed way to recognise signals and provide guidance or referral when difficulties arise.

Second: be honest in your communication. Tell participants in advance that meditation can also trigger unpleasant experiences, that this is normal and when additional support is appropriate. This reduces shame among those who struggle.

Third: monitor actively and throughout the programme. Not only at the end. Passive monitoring consistently and structurally underestimates the prevalence of adverse effects.

Fourth: ensure accessible follow-up. Make it clear to employees where they can turn if a session has brought something difficult to the surface. This does not need to be an elaborate system, but it must exist.

Fifth: adapt the intensity to the individual. Group programmes and apps offer no personalised guidance. Consider how you address this structurally, especially for more vulnerable employees.

The good news

88% of people who experienced adverse effects were glad they had meditated. This is the finding of the population-based study by Goldberg et al. (2021, Psychotherapy Research). Adverse effects and benefits are not mutually exclusive.

Meditation works. But it deserves a package insert and professional support. As an organisation, you can be the first to provide one.