[Buddha-l] Meditation and mental illness

[Vera, Pedro L.]

>I'm sure there IS research but I have no idea how or where to
find it.

An excellent starting point to search any aspect of medical research is the PubMed website maintained by the National Library of Medicine. In fact, this is the sine qua non for professional researchers. 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/

A simple search using an overly broad net: meditation mental illness; returned over 300 articles. This is primary literature, so a fair amount of digging through the data and critical reading of experimental design and conclusions is needed. This is fine if the question is purely a research question. Otherwise, contacting trained psychotherapists who practice meditation (as Joanna suggested) may be more helpful for practical concerns and possibly more prudent. 

Regards,
Pedro