Yoga May Improve Social, Occupational Functioning in Schizophrenia Patients

I came across this on a listserv. PsychCentral has an article about a study by Dr. Gangadhar of the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences and colleagues in Bangalore, India. People with schizophrenia were assigned to receive yoga, exercise, or placed on a wait list. The article states there were significant improvements for people in the yoga group for positive (e.g., voices) and negative (e.g., apathy) symptoms of schizophrenia and socio-occupational abilities. Interestingly, ability to recognize facial emotions--an area of weakness for those with schizophrenia-- also improved. The article doesn't indicate whether there were comparable results for people in the exercise condition, which I'm interested in as a point of comparison,

From the article:

“Yoga as an add-on treatment improves positive and negative symptoms, and emotion recognition abilities in antipsychotic-stabilized patients with schizophrenia, which in turn might improve their socio-occupational functioning,” Gangadhar and the research team concluded.

To read the PsychCentral article, click here.