The Adverse Psychiatric Effects of Intense Meditation Practices study is an IRB-approved healthcare provider interview study designed to assess the current state of the art of caring for patients presenting in meditative and spiritual crisis in clinical settings, such as emergency departments.

It is being conducted by the University of Louisville Department of Emergency Medicine by Dr. Martin Huecker, Director of Research, and his team. This is supported by the Emergent Phenomenology Research Consortium.

We wish to recruit:

  • licensed professionals, including doctors, APPs, nurses, and psychologists,
  • who have experience providing acute care for those in meditative or spiritual crisis,
  • and particularly those who work in emergency departments near major meditation centers,

to learn from them how best to care for these patients and what further research needs to be done to better support their care.

If this is you, and you are interested in helping improve the care of these patients, please contact us by email to participate in our study.

The survey will take between 30 and 90 minutes and average around 45 minutes.

Participants will receive a $99 Amazon gift card.

Risks of participation: minimal to none.

Very little information currently exists in the textbooks of emergency medicine and psychiatry about this patient population, so we are very interested in learning from those who have expertise with these patients how to better care for them.

The purpose of this study is to better understand:

  • the presentations, symptoms, signs, predisposing factors, diagnosis, management, and disposition of patients presenting in meditative or spiritual crisis,
  • the conceptual frameworks, diagnostic and management strategies, and dispositional algorithms of acute care providers,
  • what advice care providers would pass on to those less experienced with this patient population,
  • what improvements care providers would like to see in textbooks, diagnostic codes, etc., and
  • how to best add value the care of these patients,
  • and how best to incorporate this knowledge into the clinical mainstream.

Further details may be found here:

Please pass on the link to this page to anyone you know who might be qualified and interested in participating. Help us spread the word! Thanks!