Effectiveness of Yoga on Primary Dysmenorrhea among Adolescent Girls at Selected Schools

Adolescents belong to vital age group, not only because they are the entrant population to parenthood but also they are in the threshold between childhood and adulthood. The period of adolescence for a girl is a period of physical and psychological preparation for safe motherhood. The first menstrual period is called menarche. It usually starts between the ages 11 and 14. Though the menstruation is normal, some girls experience dilemma during their monthly periods. The most commonly experienced problem by the girls is cramping pain during menstruation, known as Dysmenorrhea. Dysmenorrhea is defined as pain or discomfort (cramps) during or just before a menstrual period. Two types of dysmenorrhea are primary and secondary dysmenorrhea. Primary dysmenorrhea symptoms include back ache, sweats and gastrointestinal symptoms. Pain begins at the onset of the menstrual flow and lasts for 12 to 48 hours. Pharmacotherapy can be used to treat primary dysmenorrhea but it has limitation because of adverse reactions which mandates the selection of alternative therapeutic modalities. Hence the investigator used yoga therapy to treat primary dysmenorrhea as an alternative therapy.

A quasi-experimental study was conducted in selected schools and 300 adolescent girls who had primary dysmenorrhea were selected by simple random sampling method. Data was collected by using Numerical pain intensity scale for pain and Likert scale for associated factors of primary dysmenorrhea. Pretest was conducted during menstruation and Yoga therapy was given to experimental group (150) for 3 months and for control group (150) no intervention was given. The posttest was conducted after 3 subsequent menstrual cycles for both groups.

The major findings of the study showed that there was a significant difference in the pain scores and associated factors scores of experimental and control group. The pain scores of primary dysmenorrhea was significantly different at 0.001 level of significance among experimental and control group showed that yoga therapy was one of the definite alternative therapy to treat primary dysmenorrhea.