Yoga as a Preventive Therapy for Loneliness in Orphan Adolescents

Loneliness is common among orphans and has been found to activate biological stress processes; also responsible for many psychiatric disorders like anxiety, depression, sleep problems, personality disorders, eating disorders along with nausea, headaches and poor immunity. Yoga is already emerged as an integrated approach to bring positive physical and mental health and as a preventive medicine for psychosomatic disorders in children and adolescents; however it is not much tested on orphans. The aim of the study was to evaluate the effect of a Yoga program on the loneliness in orphan adolescents. This was a randomized wait-list control (WLC) pre-post study. Eighty orphan adolescents of age ranging from 11 to 16 years were included in the study. Yoga group underwent three months of Yoga program with a schedule of 90 minutes per day, four days per week. The WLC group underwent the routine activities. Ethical approval, informed consent form and inform assents were obtained prior to the study. Socio-demographic information form and Children's Loneliness Scale (CLS) were assessed in the beginning and end of the intervention. Independent sample 't' test showed that there was significant difference (p=0.001) in the post scores of CLS in Yoga group compared to WLC group. There were no significant difference observed in both the groups between pre and post scores although the magnitude of change in Yoga group (19.28%, p=0.069) is higher as compared to WLC group (7.45%, p=0.884). Three months Yoga program may be useful for the young orphan adolescents in reducing loneliness.