Yoga as an Escape from Depreciating Mental Health due to COVID 19: A Qualitative study analyzing the factors associated with mental status based on the experiences of geriatric population's participation in an Online program during COVID 19 lockdown in India.
Varun Malhotra, Ananyan Sampath, Danish Javed, Rajay Bharshankar, Shweta Mishra, Vijender Singh, Dibyanshu Singh, Avani Kulkarni, Namita Gautam, Rimjhim Rastogi
International Journal of Yoga 2022 DOI: 10.4103/ijoy.ijoy_121_22 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Qualitative study Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Sample size | 30 |
| Population | Older adults with mild or moderate depression, anxiety, or stress as assessed by DASS-21 |
| Intervention | Yoga-Meditation based mobile phone application |
| Measures | DASS-21 |
| Topics | Meditation |
| Keywords | Dass Geriatric psychiatry Mental health Quarantine Yoga |
| Key findings | Interviews with 30 older adults after a Yoga-Meditation mobile app intervention identified three themes: their knowledge and beliefs about COVID-19 and related cues to action; strategies they used to promote a positive mental attitude, including religious and physical activities; and their perceptions of the app, barriers to use, and suggestions for improvement. The authors argue these insights can guide future yoga-meditation programs, especially for geriatric populations. |
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has left an array of direct physical consequences unevenly on the elderly apart from leaving a wide range of indirect consequences of mental health problems on them. This study aims to understand the effect of a Yoga-Meditation based mobile phone application intervention to reduce the duress by mental health issues via a qualitative analysis. A phenomenological qualitative succession of an explanatory sequential design of a prior quantitative study followed by a Yoga-Meditation mobile phone based intervention, where 30 participants who had mild or moderate Depression, Anxiety or Stress as assessed by DASS-21 were chosen by random sampling and were asked to take part in an interview. The interview was transcribed, coded, patterns identified and themes were created to understand the perceptions. Three major schools of thought were identified and explored to understand the general perception of Mental health, COVID-19 and the intervention: a) Knowledge Axis patterns of COVID-19, which included their prior knowledge about the disease, its consequences and their cues to action based on those beliefs, b) Mental Health and Strategies to Positivity, involves all their actions to promote, restore or propagate a positive mental attitude from religious activities to physical activities and c) Application related thoughts, involved their perceptions of the app, the barriers to use and suggestions to improve. This study gave deeper insight into the schools of thought which will be important in designing future interventions and yoga-meditation based programs in the future, essentially for geriatric populations as it serves as a feasible simple measure for the same.
Comparable studies
Other qualitative studies on meditation, most cited first.