A RANDOMIZED CONTROL TRIAL INVOLVING YOGA INTERVENTION FOR COGNITIVE ENHANCEMENT IN PERSONS WITH REMITTED UNIPOLAR DEPRESSION

Depression is the most common mental health problemthrough-out the world including India. It has significant burden on publichealth in India with prevalence of 4.4% and & 7.1% of total years livedwith disability. Although, more focus is on mood symptoms indepression, presence of cognitive deficits is a matter of concern, according tothe evidence. Research shows that, cognitive deficits areexclusively responsible for functional impairment and disabilities leading topoor quality of life and unemployment. Though the role ofpharmacotherapy in remitting mood and physical symptoms is well known,cognitive deficits do persist, even after remission; especially in the domainsof executive function, working memory and attention. This indicatesthat even the individuals are out of apparent depression, their ability toperform optimally in their roles in the society, is hindered. Since there is nostandard, evidence-based solution for this issue, we, in this randomizedcontrolled trial, aim at employing yoga as an adjuvant intervention inimproving cognitive deficits. In this study 76 patients with remitted unipolardepression will be randomly assigned to yoga intervention and treatment asusual group. Both the groups will be assessed for cognitive functions atbaseline, after intervention and 1 month later. The performance in cognitivetests will be compared across timeline and between two groups.  Previous studies have shown that yoga haspositive effect on cognition in healthy and across various psychiatricdisorders. Hence, if yoga is found to be effective in our currenttarget population, it can serve as an implicit cognitive training interventionfor cognitive deficits in remission phase of unipolar depression, which is wellaccepted, easily accessible and cost effective.