Yoga may offer hope to early psychosis patients, HKU study finds
University study finds it boosts attention, memory … even the size of an area in the brain
Doing yoga may help patients in the early stages of psychosis to improve their memory and attention while alleviating symptoms such as depression, according to a University of Hong Kong study.
While medication has been shown to help reduce hallucinations and delusions, it has limitations, the researchers say.
"As the condition progresses, patients' cognitive functions deteriorate and taking medicine doesn't help that," postdoctoral fellow in psychiatry Dr Jessie Lin Jinhxia said in releasing the study results yesterday.
Four years ago, Lin and her team began recruiting female patients aged 18 to 55 for the study, the first to look at the effects of yoga on early psychosis patients.
The 60 patients who took part were receiving similar but not identical treatment.
They were divided into two groups - one of the groups practised yoga while the other did not do any extra physical exercise. The yoga group did 36 one-hour yoga sessions over a 12-week period.
Assessments after the 12 weeks showed that their attention score increased by 13 per cent and visual-motor co-ordination by 10 per cent. Those in the control group experienced decreases of 13 per cent and 2 per cent, respectively.
