As well as improving flexibility, yoga also helps mental wellbeing (Wiki Commons)

Practising yoga improves symptoms of all types of mental health disorders other than eating disorders and cognition problems.

A review into the effect of exercise on major mental health problems found that yoga had positive effects on depression, sleep complaints, ADHD and schizophrenia.

Study author Murali Doraiswamy, professor of psychiatry and medicine at Duke University Medical Centre, said there is increasing evidence that the 5,000-year-old Indian practice can help to treat psychiatric disorders.

The research, published in the journal Frontiers in Psychiatry, reviewed over 100 studies and focused on 16 high-quality controlled studies looking at the effect of yoga on depression, schizophrenia, ADHD, sleep complaints, eating disorders and cognition problems.

The authors noted that while yoga is widely believed to have positive effect on mental health, strong scientific evidence is lacking. They wrote: "Yoga has become such a cultural phenomenon that it has become difficult for physicians and patients to differentiate legitimate claims from hype.

"Our goal was to examine whether the evidence matched the promise."

It is estimated that 30 million people worldwide regularly practice yoga. It focuses on strength, flexibility and breathing through a series of postures.

The NHS highlights its benefits, saying there is evidence to suggest this form of exercise helps people with arthritis, blood pressure, heart disease, aches and pains, including low back pain, depression and stress.

Doraiswamy and his colleagues found that yoga had a positive effect on all the mental health problems examined except eating disorders and cognition problems; evidence for these problems was either conflicting or lacking.

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Yoga Helps Schizophrenia, ADHD and Depression