Impact of a 12-week yogic intervention on selected psychological parameters among cardiac and diabetic patients of the Agra region: A pre-test post-test experimental study
Ravi Shankar Singh, Lokendra Pal Singh Chauhan
International Journal of Yogic, Human Movement and Sports Sciences September 1, 2026 DOI: 10.22271/yogic.2026.v11.i9a.1997 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Controlled intervention study (non-randomized, with experimental and control groups within each clinical category) Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Sample size | 60 |
| Population | Adult male cardiac and diabetic patients aged 45-70 years (30 cardiac, 30 diabetic) |
| Intervention | pranayama |
| Duration | 12-week intervention, 5 days/week |
| Measures | Anxiety, Depression and Stress Scale (ADSS-BSPSA), Sleep Questionnaire developed by Stanley et al. |
| Key findings | In both cardiac and diabetic patients, a 12-week supervised yoga intervention was associated with significant reductions in stress and anxiety and significant improvements in sleep-pattern scores relative to controls, whose changes were non-significant. Cardiac patients showed decreases of 11.34 points in stress and 10.26 points in anxiety with a 6.26-point sleep improvement; diabetic patients showed decreases of 10.33 and 9.40 points with a 6.13-point sleep improvement. |
Abstract
To evaluate the effect of a structured 12-week yogic intervention comprising yogic asanas, pranayama and guided meditation on stress, anxiety and sleep pattern among adult male cardiac and diabetic patients. Sixty male patients aged 45-70 years (30 cardiac and 30 diabetic) participated; within each clinical category, 15 were assigned to an experimental group and 15 to a control group. The experimental group received supervised yoga 5 days/week for 12 weeks in addition to standard medical care, while controls continued standard medical care. Stress and anxiety were measured using the Anxiety, Depression and Stress Scale (ADSS-BSPSA), and sleep quality using the Sleep Questionnaire developed by Stanley et al., with higher sleep scores indicating better sleep quality. Paired-sample t-tests and baseline-adjusted ANCOVA were conducted using IBM SPSS Statistics version 22. Stress and anxiety scores decreased significantly and sleep-pattern scores increased significantly in both experimental clinical categories, while control-group changes were non-significant. In cardiac patients, stress decreased by 11.34 points, anxiety by 10.26 points and sleep-pattern score increased by 6.26 points. In diabetic patients, stress decreased by 10.33 points, anxiety by 9.40 points and sleep-pattern score increased by 6.13 points. ANCOVA showed significant group effects for the reported psychological variables (p < 0.001).