Frequency and Intensity of Peak Experiences as Predictors of Depression

A peak experience is an altered state of consciousness that allows an individual to reach a higher level of consciousness, called Being cognition, which usually results in feelings of unity and euphoria (Mathes et al., 1982; Fatemi, 2004). The main objective of our research was to determine if peak experiences have a protective effect on depressive symptoms. Our primary hypotheses were that there would be a negative correlation between frequency and intensity of peak experiences and depression scores. Participants were recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk), an online data collection platform. Our sample consisted of 146 respondents, made up of 90 men and 56 women, with the women being signficantly older. Statistical analyses did not provide support for our primary hypotheses. However, we did find a significant relationship between depressive symptoms and endorsement of being mentally affected by the COVID-19 pandemic (t=2.431; p=0.017). Furthermore, the mean score (M=19.83) on the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale was higher than the 16-point cut-off for depression, indicating that a large number of individuals in the sample met the criteria for depression. Because of this, we believe our results may have been impacted by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, with 80.2% of participants reporting being either mentally or emotionally affected due to COVID-19. Furthermore, the relationship between frequency of peak experiences and gender approached significance (t=2.607; p=0.10), with women reporting slightly more frequent peak experiences than men (Female Mean=1.59, Male Mean=1.32). This relationship was evident even when factoring in age (p=0.028).