Yoga as complementary care within child and adolescent psychiatry
(Nóra Kerekes 2022)

Research indicates that adolescents from millennials (born between 1981 and 1996) and generation Z (born between 1997 and 2012) report higher levels of psychological distress (1,2), and 10–20% of young people in Europe and worldwide suffer from mental illnesses, while one out of five struggles with emotional or behavioral problems (1,3).

It was previously shown that yoga improves children’s physical and mental well-being (4) and helps students improve resilience, mood, and self-regulation skills about emotions and stress (5). Yoga’s most often proven health potential is to be a coping strategy for stress, anxiety, and sleep problems (6)

A review of scientific knowledge about yoga’s role in children’s and adolescents’ development and mental health it was concluded that yoga is an important life skill tool to cope with stress and self-regulation in a life-long perspective (6). The authors argued that children and young people need such tools to learn interoception and learn the recognize their feelings (6).

The evidence of yoga practice among children indicates improved benefits in concentration, stress alleviation, resilience, self-awareness, consciousness, self-regulation, behavioral and emotional maturity, and self-confidence in everyday life (6). Yoga practice is coupled to improved focus even in the case of children with attention problems (7) and to a capacity to support executive function development (8)

It is suggested that the physiological working mechanism behind the phenotypic changes is yoga’s capacity to down-regulate the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis and the sympathetic nervous system (9). Nourollahimoghadam et al (10) recently summarized in their review on yoga’s therapeutic impact on neuropsychological conditions, the neuroanatomical and neurochemical ways through which yoga impacts the brain. They conclude that yoga stimulates brain synaptic plasticity and by that can improve cognitive functioning and working memory. The limbic system is often included when neuroanatomical change are recorded in yoga practitioners (10). Neurochemical changes and increased cortical GABAergic production were detected, besides an enhancement of dopamine in the ventral striatum and a rise in serotonin after regular yoga practice (10).

In their review article, Büssing et al. (11) suggest:

Yoga may well be effective as a supportive adjunct to mitigate some medical conditions, but not yet a proven stand-alone, curative treatment. Larger-scale and more rigorous research with higher methodological quality and adequate control interventions is highly encouraged because yoga may have potential to be implemented as a beneficial supportive/adjunct treatment that is relatively cost-effective, may be practiced at least in part as self-care behavioral treatment, provides a life-long behavioral skill, enhances self-efficacy and self-confidence and is often associated with additional positive side effects (2012: 1).

Undoubtedly, we need (more) high-quality scientific research about yoga practice among children and adolescents. Therefore, our newest study focuses on the effect of yoga in child and adolescent psychiatric settings.

With the help of previously validated psychological and biological measures – the study aims to evaluate impact of trauma–adapted yoga (TAY) as a complement to care as usual in child and adolescent psychiatric (CAP) clinics in the USA and Sweden.

It is hypothesized, that eight weeks of (TAY) yoga practice (in combination with the standard treatment within CAP) will:

1. Reduce participants’ reported negative affect,  pain intensity and frequency.
2. Improve patients’ self-reported their emotional and behavioral control, sustain their attention, and strengthen their resilience. 

As a result of increased well-being, yoga will enhance the success of other ongoing treatments in CAP, foster improved wellbeing for staff and provide patients with tools for self-care.

The study’s results have great relevance and importance in developing and improving of evidence-based and effective care for children and adolescents suffering from mental illness and filling an international scientific knowledge gap about yoga’s function as a care method.