Psychyatra

A report on 2 sessions that took place during the NACIACP conference, NIMHANS.

Poster presentation P2I.2 –Indian Psychology:

Effectiveness of Yoga therapy on subjective well-being and basic living skill of schizophrenic patients. Mr. Babu P.

Yoga is seen as important in a country like India. It is a very old system of healing the body physically and mentally. But very few studies have studied the effect of Yoga on schizophrenic patients. In this study 30 chronic schizophrenic patients were randomly assigned to either an experimental group (Yoga therapy along with pharmacotherapy) and to a control group (pharmacotherapy alone). Two scales were used for assessment. They are the PGI General Well Being Measure(GWBG), and the Checklist for Basic Living Skills and Indian Disability Evaluation and Assessment Scale(IDEAS). The experimental group attended Yoga therapy everyday for about one and a half hours and they also received motivational and feedback sessions. After this chi-square test was used to analyze and evaluate the data. When the results were compared after a month it was found that the experimental group were functioning better in terms of their self care, were more involved in their work , had a higher sense of well being etc. The contribution of Yoga on mental health practice has been acknowledged worldwide and is used as an adjunct to therapy in many countries.

Poster presentation P2I.4Trigunas and color preferences. Ms. Astha Sharma

The present study brought together 2 concepts trigunas and color preferences to see their interrelationships as well their relationship with personality characteristics of individuals. The study was done on a group of 30 teachers in Lucknow (Hindus and Muslims). The 2 scales used were the Vedic Personality Inventory and the Luscher Color Test. The data was analyzed both using the t-test and the chi square test. It was found that people choose colors according to their attitude towards life and their emotions. The personality characteristics associated with the trigunas are: Sattvic personality is truthful, lawful, stable etc., the Rajasic personality is angry, jealous, proud etc., and the tamasic personality is lazy, inactive, and reckless etc. The main ways of gaining happiness are: by the Sattvic personality are through meditation, helping others and serving society, by the Rajasic personality are by focusing on gaining worldly pleasures, by the Tamasic personality are by excessively eating and drinking etc. Those with Sattvic personalities sleep 4-6 hours and prefer colors like blue, yellow, and white, whereas those with Rajasic personalities sleep 7-9 hours and prefer colors like red, green and violet, and those with Tamasic personalities sleep 12-15 hours and prefer black and other colors having a high percentage of black. On the basis of the means a predominance of Sattva guna was seen in the whole sample. The influence of religion was not evident as far as dominance of gunas was concerned and religion may have played a role in the choice of colors. Two limitations of this study were that firstly a small sample was used, and secondly the presence of external factors, individual differences, and aesthetic factors were not considered.

Concurrent symposium 2B: Understanding cognitions and meta cognitions in health and illness.(Day 2)

1) Cognitions and meta cognitions in emotional disorders- Dr. M.P.Sharma

Cognition is the full range of processes and mechanisms that support thinking and also the content or products of these processes, namely thoughts themselves. There are 3 levels of cognitions: the Tripartite divisions of thought: beliefs, assumptions, and automatic thoughts.

The cognitive theory assumes that to survive, one needs to process information. Schemata refer to the fundamental cognitive structures about the self and the world. Also discussed was automatic thoughts also called self-verbalizations, which clients are rarely aware of unless asked to notice them.

Some of the cognitive errors are the all or none thinking, arbitrary thinking(conclusion based on incomplete information), personalization, magnification, disqualifying the positives and catastrophizing. The disenchantment over the limits of behavioral approaches led to the “revolutionary” acceptance of the idea that cognition is one of the forces driving behavior. The basic premise of cognitive theories of emotional disorder is that dysfunction arises from an individual’s interpretation of events. Flavel(1979) introduced the term “meta-cognition” which refers to any knowledge, or cognitive process that is involved in the monitoring, controlling or appraisal of cognitions. Meta cognition is a multi-faceted concept. In other words it is a “feeling of knowing”. There are 3 types of meta cognitions- meta cognitions of knowledge- beliefs about one’s own cognitions, meta cognitions of experience- appraisal of meaning to specific mental events, meta cognitions of control strategies- responses to control activities of the cognitive system. Also discussed were the 2 types of worry: type 1 worry is the concern about external things, type 2 worry is the worry about worry. Recent models of psychopathology, particularly OCD, have begun to emphasize the role of beliefs about one’s thoughts and appraisal of thoughts themselves in the development and persistence of the disorder and this emphasis has proven valuable in the advancing our understanding and treatment of emotional disorders.

2) Dysfunctional cognitions in medical conditions- Dr. Naveen Grover

Cognitive factors play an important role in the development and management of medical conditions in people. The way one thinks about a medical condition can influence its outcomes positively or negatively. Cognitions that were seen as functional before the onset of the illness, may be seen as dysfunctional once the illness sets in. Medical conditions can trigger dysfunctional cognitions related to the domains of loss and threat. Catastrophic interpretation of symptoms can be seen in chronic fatigue syndrome, chronic pain syndrome. Adherence to the “all or none” response in which patients either follow the doctor’s advice(adherence) or deviate from it in some way(non-adherence). The factors that impact dysfunctional cognitions are internal locus of control orientation in which illness is attributed to one’s own actions. External locus of control is when events are unrelated to one’s actions and are beyond one’s control. Dysfunctional cognitions can affect a person’s health in atleast 3 ways- they may hold irrational beliefs about themselves which influence illness related behavior; they might involve in maladaptive cognitive appraisals; and negative cognitions about illness may cause them to experience anxiety and depression which, in turn, may exacerbate existing illness or increase illness related distress. Another important factor is that strong self efficacy beliefs need to be promoted in the medically ill.

Mukta