Review articleA systematic review of yoga for major depressive disorder
Section snippets
Background
Depression is one of the most prevalent psychiatric disorders as it affects 25% of women and 12% of men during their lifetime and increases the psychological strain for the affected person (Kessler et al., 2003, Moussavi et al., 2007, Rubio et al., 2011). Moreover, depression is characterized by a high comorbidity with several chronic conditions like addictions (Lai et al., 2015), neurodegenerative diseases (Herbert and Lucassen, 2016, Riccelli et al., 2016) or different psychiatric diseases (
Methods
This review was conducted and reported in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines (Moher et al., 2009) as well as the recommendations of the Cochrane Collaboration (Higgins and Green, 2008).
Literature search
Nine hundred ninety-seven non-duplicate records were retrieved by literature search; 979 of which were excluded because they were not randomized, did not include participants with major depression and/or did not include yoga as an intervention. Eighteen full-texts were assessed for eligibility (Butler et al., 2008, Field et al., 2013a, Field et al., 2013b, Field et al., 2012, Gangadhar et al., 2013, Kinser et al., 2013, Kinser et al., 2014, Lavretsky et al., 2013, Naveen et al., 2013, Naveen et
Summary of evidence
In this systematic review of seven RCTs, comparable effects were found for yoga compared to exercise and medication. Electro-convulsive therapy induced stronger antidepressant effects than yoga. Conflicting evidence was found when yoga was compared to attention-control interventions or when yoga was used as an add-on to antidepressant medication was compared to medication alone. The safety of the intervention remained largely unclear.
Agreements with prior systematic reviews
To the best of our knowledge, this is the first systematic
Funding/support
None.
Potential conflict of interest
None.
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