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

Public release date: 25-Jan-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Gozde Zorlu gozde.zorlu@frontiersin.org Frontiers

Yoga has positive effects on mild depression and sleep complaints, even in the absence of drug treatments, and improves symptoms associated with schizophrenia and ADHD in patients on medication, according to a systematic review of the exercise on major clinical psychiatric disorders.

Published in the open-access journal, Frontiers in Psychiatry, on January 25th, 2013, the review of more than one hundred studies focusing on 16 high-quality controlled studies looked at the effects of yoga on depression, schizophrenia, ADHD, sleep complaints, eating disorders and cognition problems.

Yoga in popular culture

Yoga is a popular exercise and is practiced by 15.8 million adults in the United States alone, according to a survey by the Harris Interactive Service Bureau, and its holistic goal of promoting psychical and mental health is widely held in popular belief.

"However, yoga has become such a cultural phenomenon that it has become difficult for physicians and patients to differentiate legitimate claims from hype," wrote the authors in their study. "Our goal was to examine whether the evidence matched the promise."

Benefits of the exercise were found for all mental health illnesses included in the review, except for eating disorders and cognition problems as the evidence for these was conflicting or lacking.

Dr. P. Murali Doraiswamy, a professor of psychiatry and medicine at Duke University Medical Center, US, and author of the study, explained that the emerging scientific evidence in support of the 5,000 year old Indian practice on psychiatric disorders is "highly promising" and showed that yoga may not only help to improve symptoms, but also may have an ancillary role in the prevention of stress-related mental illnesses.

The review found evidence from biomarker studies showing that yoga influences key elements of the human body thought to play a role in mental health in similar ways to that of antidepressants and psychotherapy. One study found that the exercise affects neurotransmitters, inflammation, oxidative stress, lipids, growth factors and second messengers.

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Frontiers publishes systematic review on the effects of yoga on major psychiatric disorders