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. 2012 Jul;5(2):85-91.
doi: 10.4103/0973-6131.98212.

Yoga therapy for Schizophrenia

N Gangadhar Bangalore  1 , Shivarama Varambally
Affiliations

Yoga therapy for Schizophrenia

N Gangadhar Bangalore et al. Int J Yoga. 2012 Jul.

Abstract

Schizophrenia is one of the most severe mental disorders. Despite significant advances in pharmacotherapy, treatment remains sub-optimal, with many patients having persisting deficits, especially in cognitive and social functioning. Yoga as a therapy has proven to be effective as a sole or additional intervention in psychiatric disorders such as depression and anxiety. Recently, there has been significant interest in the application of yoga therapy in psychosis and schizophrenia. To review a) the evidence for the use of yoga therapy in patients with schizophrenia b) studies which have been done in this area, c) the barriers for reaching yoga to patients, and d) future directions, an English language literature search of PubMed/MEDLINE, Google Scholar, and EBSCO as well as grey literature was done. Research reports have demonstrated the feasibility and efficacy of yoga as an add-on therapy in schizophrenia, particularly in improving negative symptomatology and social cognition. However, the biological underpinnings of this effect remain unclear, although there are some indications that hormones like oxytocin may contribute to the changes in social cognition.

Keywords: Schizophrenia; social cognition; yoga therapy.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of Interest: None declared

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
In outpatients on stabilized drug therapy, yoga therapy (YT) produced significantly more benefits compared to physical exercise (PT) on several clinical measures (Duraiswamy et al 2007; reprinted with permission from Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica)
Figure 2
Figure 2
Higher proportion of patients improved in Yoga group as against the other groups on, negative and total symptom scores
Figure 3
Figure 3
Patients in Yoga group accurately identified more emotional pictures at 1 and 3 months than those in Exercise group (Behere et al 2011) (For illustration only yoga and exercise data is shown), (Reprinted with permission from Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica)
Figure 4
Figure 4
Plasma oxytocin levels increased significantly in patients doing yoga, as compared to no significant change in the waitlist group (Jayaram 2012).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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