Stress Management Summit

Biography

Biography: Gaurav Chaudhari

Abstract

Stress is one of the major problems in modern times which we face every second. As a result several ways of coping up with stress are evolved. We here describe the study of effects of one such popular non pharmacological measure, “Yoga” on the mental health of its practitioners. Both, the subjective and physiological parameters were considering while evaluating the impact of Yoga, present effects of non-pharmacological measures on mental health for stress management, more interestingly which is practically available for every one of us and basically, free of cost. Famed under the name “YOGA”, we studied its effect on every systems like cardiovascular system, respiratory system, muscular-skeletal system and there on. We have observed and analyzed the quantitative and qualitative effects on a number of subjects. The effects of Yoga in sports chronic/terminal illness and mental health were checked for. Qualitative Assessment of mental health was done using The General Health Questionnaire GHQ-28 (28-48), Hamilton Anxiety and Depression scales Qualitative effects were assessed on the basis of various physiological parameters. We had recruited 500 people who continuously practiced “YOGA” for 3 months the mental health indicators where co related with various socio-demographic parameters like Work stress, family size, lifestyle, chronic illnesses, reasons for opting “Yoga” Etc. and were tested for any statistically significant associations. To find out the effects of yoga, study subjects were reassessed 3 months after initiation of Yoga using the same tools as in the beginning. We noted positive impact of Yoga in several fields like learning abilities, concentration, improvement of BMI, waist-hip ratios, blood pressure (the prevalence of hypertension has decreased statistically from 7 - 4.8%), a relative decrease in psychiatric morbidity rates (on the basis of GHQ-28, HAM 1, HAM 2 were 32.6%, 26.2% and 56.6% at the beginning of study which decreased to 19.2%, 11.6% and 39.2% respectively), the improvement in the scores were statistically significant, and we concluded that Yoga intervention can lead to significant overall improvement in mental health. The age group deriving the maximal benefit was 28-37 years. The improvement was more in males (18.3%) as compared to females (4.1%). Improvement in blood pressure was distinctly significant as compared to BMI and WHR. Yoga did not alter the normotensive blood pressure but it decreased the blood pressure in hypertensive group, therefore yoga has a tendency to keep blood pressure within normal range. Improvement in mental health score is significant in hypertensive group as compared to normotensive therefore reduction in blood pressure may also be secondary to reduction in stress.