Yoga and Mental Health in Medical Students: Some Methodological Considerations.

Sir,

Impact of short-term yoga intervention on mental well-being of medical students posted in community medicine: A pilot study by Bansal et al.,(1) made for an interesting read. I would like to commend the authors for the current project which is an innovative attempt to improve the mental well-being of medical students by practice of yoga. However, I would like to point out a few methodological issues that significantly affect the interpretation of study results.

First and foremost, absence of any control group like wait-list controls (which is the usual norm in research on yoga) is a significant limitation of this study. Not ruling out pre-existing psychiatric disorders like depressive and anxiety disorders by use of a standardized questionnaire like Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview (MINI)(2) might have resulted in accidental inclusion of such cases in the study group that might have biased the results. Lack of follow-up means the sustainability of effect of the short-term yoga intervention cannot be commented upon. Additionally, absence of an intention to treat analysis (ITT) could have resulted in better results than what was true.

Not withstanding the limitations, I would like to concur with the author in their recommendation of including yoga in undergraduate medical curriculum and also emphasize the need for quality research on yoga practices to generate sound research data.