UNC study: Yoga treatment shows promise for improving trauma and related mental health problems

Dec 20 2016

“Overall, the researchers found that yoga holds potential promise for helping improve anxiety, depression, PTSD and/or the psychological consequences of trauma”, according to a University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill news-release regarding a study by researchers at its School of Social Work.

Release adds that the study “suggested that clinicians and service providers consider recommending yoga as an intervention” in addition to other treatments.

According the published abstract of this study in “Trauma, Violence, & Abuse” Journal, under the title “Yoga for Trauma and Related Mental Health Problems”, which undertook a systematic meta-review of 13 literature reviews (which examined 185 distinct studies): Findings show that the evidence regarding yoga as an intervention for the effects of trauma as well as the mental health symptoms and illnesses often associated with trauma is encouraging.

Health and human service providers have expressed growing interest in the benefits of yoga to help individuals cope with the effects of trauma, including anxiety, depression, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD); the abstract says.

Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada today, called the UNC-Chapel Hill looking into possible usage of yoga for trauma and related mental health problems “a step in the positive direction”. Zed urged all major world universities to explore various benefits yoga offers.

Yoga, referred as “a living fossil”, was a mental and physical discipline, for everybody to share and benefit from, whose traces went back to around 2,000 BCE to Indus Valley civilization, Zed, who is President of Universal Society of Hinduism, noted.

Rajan Zed further said that yoga, although introduced and nourished by Hinduism, was a world heritage and liberation powerhouse to be utilized by all. According to Patanjali who codified it in Yoga Sutra, yoga was a methodical effort to attain perfection, through the control of the different elements of human nature, physical and psychical.

According to US National Institutes of Health, yoga may help one to feel more relaxed, be more flexible, improve posture, breathe deeply, and get rid of stress. According to a “2016 Yoga in America Study”, about 37 million Americans (which included many celebrities) now practice yoga; and yoga is strongly correlated with having a positive self image.  Yoga was the repository of something basic in the human soul and psyche, Zed added.

Some of the study researchers “are considering several possible future studies, including one that would examine the use of yoga within a rape crisis center or domestic violence shelter”, UNC-Chapel Hill news-release indicates.

UNC-Chapel Hill, said to be the nation’s first public university founded in 1789, claims to be “a global higher education leader known for innovative teaching, research and public service” and boasts of two Nobel laureates on its staff. Dwight D. Stone, Carol L. Folt and Gary L. Bowen are its Trustees Chair, Chancellor and School of Social Work Dean respectively.