PsychCentral has news about two studies showing that Transcendental Meditation (TM) helps reduce depression…at least for African-Americans and Hawaiians over 55.
Participants in both studies who practiced the Transcendental Meditation program showed significant reductions in depressive symptoms compared to health education controls.
The largest decreases were found in those participants who had indications of clinically significant depression, with those practicing Transcendental Meditation showing an average reduction in depressive symptoms of 48 percent.
TM is meditation with a mantra–focusing your attention on a repeated word or phrase. Different, say, than mindfulness meditation, where focus is devoted to one thing in the moment–usually breathing. Here are Wikipedia’s description of TM and of meditation in general.