PROVIDENCE – Research recently conducted at Butler Hospital, a Care New England facility, evaluated whether treatment outcomes for depressed patients would be improved by the addition of hatha yoga, as medication and/or psychotherapy are not always effective for many patients. They found that the benefits of yoga were less pronounced early in treatment, but may accumulate over time.
The research, entitled “Adjunctive Yoga v. Health Education for Persistent Major Depression: A Randomized Controlled Trial,” has been published in Psychological Medicine. Lisa Uebelacker, a research psychologist in Butler Hospital’s psychosocial-research department, and an associate professor of psychiatry and human behavior at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, conducted the research, with a team from Butler Hospital, the Warren Alpert Medical School and Rhode Island Hospital, a Lifespan facility, as well as representatives from Eyes of the World Yoga Center in Providence (which has since closed) and from the University of California San Diego.
“The purpose of this study was to examine whether hatha yoga is effective for treating depression when used in addition to antidepressant medication,” Uebelacker said in a statement. “We did not see statistically significant differences between hatha yoga and a control group (health education) at 10 weeks. [H]owever, when we examined outcomes over a period of time, including the three and six months after yoga classes ended, we found yoga was superior to health education in alleviating depression symptoms.”
According to Uebelacker, this is the largest study of yoga for depression to date. The team enrolled individuals with current or recent major depression who were receiving antidepressant medication and continued to have clinically significant depression symptoms. Participants were randomized into two groups – those who participated in a hatha yoga class and a control group who took part in a health education class. The intervention phase lasted 10 weeks and participants were followed for six months afterward.
“We hypothesized that yoga participants would show lower depression severity over time, as assessed by the Quick Inventory of Depression Symptomatology, as well as better social and role functioning, better general health perceptions and physical functioning, and less physical pain relative to the control group,” said Uebelacker. “We found that yoga did indeed have an impact on depression symptoms.”
Nancy Kirsch is a PBN contributing writer.
