OK, you’ve exercised your memory enough for today, Luc. :) The answer is Maharishi Mahesh Yogi –
b. The Maharishi Effect
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi was a spiritual leader who developed and popularized a mantra-based form of meditation called Transcendental Meditation. He originally predicted that if 1% of a population practiced this meditation method, it would have a measurable, positive impact on the whole population. Later, he developed an augmented training program, and it was predicted that only the square root of 1 % of a population would need to practice this method in order to show a benefit to the whole population. There have been numerous studies around the world that suggest that even such a small percentage of a local population, practicing the meditation method, has had a statistically significant effect on quality-of-life measures such as crime rate and car accidents (Wiki).
What percentage of the population is now taking antidepressants?
In Oct 2011, the C.D.C. reported that from 1998 to 2008, U.S. antidepressant prescriptions rose 400 %, and more than 1 in 10 Americans over age 12 were taking an antidepressant (healthland.time.com). That is not a typo – yes, 400 %.
In 2010, there were 3.5 million antidepressant prescriptions written in Wales, where antidepressant use had risen 71 % over the previous eight years. In 2010, there were 4.3 million prescriptions in Scotland, an increase of 43 % over the previous eight years. And, in 2009, there were 39.1 million prescriptions in England, an increase of 61% over the previous eight years (the population of England was 52.5 million then) (mentalhealthy.co.uk). In 2011, 46.7 million antidepressant prescriptions were written in England, a 9.1 % increase over 2010 (ic.nhs.uk).
Worldwide sales of antidepressants reached $20.3 billion in 2008 (bloomberg.com). In 2007, the Eli Lilly website stated that Prozac had been prescribed for more than 54 million people in 90 countries" (thedailybeast.com, fasebj.org). The world population in 2007 was about 6,625,000 (prb.org).
You can see that the numbers are big and increasing rapidly. It’s easier to get numbers of prescriptions than numbers of actual people taking the drugs, but in 2008, the U.S. government found that roughly 10% of Americans over age 12 were taking an antidepressant (healthland.time.com), and in September 2011, the government of Scotland estimated that 11.3% of Scots over age 15 were taking an antidepressant (bbc.co.uk).
According to the Maharishi Effect theory, you only need the square root of 1% of a population to be meditating in a certain way to have an influence on the whole population. What happens to the whole population when 10% are taking the same type of powerful medication? Does that 10% have an even stronger influence on people who have previously ingested the same medication, even though they are now off it?
http://neuroscienceandpsi.blogspot.c...1_archive.html
[Luc collected all these stats for me.]
Amit Goswami is very cool. He has a book and he’s in “What the Bleep do we Know?” Did you all see that movie?
