To enhance rural mental health care through yoga interventions, NIMHANS on Tuesday launched Yoga-based Extension Services (YES) in its ongoing community intervention programmes at Thirthahalli and Turuvekere in Shivamogga and Tumakuru districts respectively.
YES, will be a six-session, once a month face-to-face programme whenever a patient comes to the Primary Health Centre/hospital for a follow-up, for a 30-45 minute duration. Brochures/videos depicting yoga practice with instructions in the local language will be provided to encourage daily practice at home. Indian Council of Medical Research director-general Rajiv Bahl, NIMHANS director Pratima Murthy and National Medical Commission chairperson B.N. Gangadhar launched the YES programme on Tuesday.
“We expect to observe improvement in symptom severity, disability, social cognition, socio-occupational functioning, and well-being over six months, along with delivery and fidelity (support and challenges) of YES,” said Aarti Jagannathan, principal investigator of YES project and additional professor of Psychiatric Social Work at NIMHANS.
Schizophrenia patients
The Community Intervention Psychotic Disorders programme in Thirthahalli was started in June 2005 with research grants under the National Mental Health Programme. Since then, NIMHANS team has been examining clinically relevant research questions among these representative, community-dwelling schizophrenia patients.
