Prevalence of Depressive Symptoms and Effectiveness of Yoga on Depressive Symptoms among Professional Students of selected Institutions at Mangalore, South India

Abstract

Introduction:

No one is inborn immunized to emotional disturbance, each individual is prone to it.  Yoga practice was adopted in the educational institutions as mandatory in the Vedic period,  as a process to take care of all dimensions of health of the students to achieve their destination.     Nowadays it is challenging to the student fraternity to overcome the challenges in the competitive world and to live successfully by balancing their overall health.

Aims:

To find the prevalence of depressive symptoms among professional students, to determine the effectiveness of Yoga on depressive symptoms  from the selected professional institutions.  To find the association between depressive symptoms with selected demographic variables.

Materials and methods: Descriptive survey with evaluative research approach was adopted.  The data were collected through the Beck Depression Inventory and Demographic proforma.  Intervention was given for 8 consecutive weeks for the subjects who were identified with mild to moderate depressive symptoms. Posttest was done 1 week after the intervention.

Results: The study revealed that; the prevalence rate of depressive symptoms was 67.08%.  There was a statistically significant (P ? 0.001) reduction in the mean scores of depressive symptoms among the subjects from the pre intervention to posttest after the 1 week of intervention. A significant association was found with living status of parents, and history of mental illness in the family and depressive symptoms and the values are p?0.05. The Yoga was very effective in reducing the depressive symptoms of the professional students.

Key words: Prevalence, Depressive symptoms, professional students, Yoga.