Efficacy of Yoga as an Add-On Treatment of Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a serious mental illness characterized by incoherent or illogical thoughts, bizarre behavior and speech, and delusions or hallucinations, such as hearing voices. Person suffering from the disorder may be seriously impaired. Also, family members may be seriously affected. However, through proper treatment many individuals suffering from schizophrenia can recover. Anti-psychotic drugs play a crucial role in schizophrenia treatment. However, anti-psychotics may treat the positive symptoms of schizophrenia and do little to improve the lost ability of the patient due to negative symptoms. Second-generation anti-psychotics are slightly more effective than first-generation anti-psychotics in treating positive symptoms of symptoms, but their efficacy against negative symptoms has not been borne out. Many patients continue to suffer from persistent symptoms and relapses, particularly when they fail to adhere to prescribed medication. This underlines the need for multi modal care that include psychosocial and physical therapies such as yoga, adjunct to anti-psychotic medication to help alleviate symptoms and improve patient's quality of life. Yoga as an additional treatment along with anti-psychotics can be use, as it has proved to deal with both the positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia. Unlike anti-psychotic drugs, yoga has no side effects. This paper evaluates research on efficacy of yoga as an add-on treatment of schizophrenia. Review shows that yoga is useful in treating negative symptoms of schizophrenia in stabilized patients though more research is required to understand yoga's effect on schizophrenia.