Yoga as complementary care for patients in forensic psychiatry 

Patients in forensic psychiatry have severe psychiatric diagnoses often combined with aggressive behavior and drug-related problems. They are sentenced to compulsory long-term care (on average, about six years per patient), causing significant health and economic consequences. To improve the rehabilitation of these patients and offer tools for self-care that may result in shortened inpatient treatment time, new and complementary efforts are needed while maintaining the most significant importance that this care is of high quality and safety and is designed according to current research-based knowledge.

Our study investigated the effects of a 10-week trauma-adapted yoga (TAY) program as a complementary intervention for patients in forensic psychiatric care.

In our study, the yoga group showed substantial reductions in:

• negative affect,
• pain frequency,
• anxiety,
• phobic anxiety,
• paranoid ideation,
• interpersonal sensitivity,
• hostility,
• and overall psychological distress,

and also demonstrated a significant  improvement in self-directedness domain of character maturity.

Kerekes N. (2024). Exploring the impact of trauma-adapted yoga in forensic psychiatry. Psychiatry research, 335, 115879. Doi: 10.1016/j.psychres.2024.115879