I have cut and pasted below an introduction from the results of a study published April 2012 in Acta Neuropsychiatrica. I’m posting this as sort of a placeholder on my blog, so that I can refer back to it for a good description of what yoga does to improve cognition. (Thanks to MIA for alerting me to this study.)

Adjunctive cognitive remediation for schizophrenia using yoga: an open, non-randomised trial
Bhatia, T., Agarwal, A., Shah, G., Wood, J., Richard, J., Gur, R. E., Gur, R. C., Nimgaonkar, V. L., Mazumdar, S. and Deshpande, S. N. (2012), Adjunctive cognitive remediation for schizophrenia using yoga: an open, non-randomised trial. Acta Neuropsychiatrica, 24: 91–100. doi: 10.1111/j.1601-5215.2011.00587.x

Introduction
Cognitive impairment represents a prominent feature of several psychiatric illnesses, including schizophrenia (SZ), major depressive disorder (MDD) and bipolar disorder (1–3). Deficits in long-term memory, working verbal memory, executive functioning and vigilance have been consistently associated with poor functional outcome in persons with SZ (4–8). As pharmacological treatment is not routinely efficacious (9), there is ongoing interest in adjunctive non-pharmacological interventions for ameliorating cognitive deficits (10–12).

In comparison with conventional therapies, yoga represents a different approach. It is a set of mental and physical practices that have been evolving in India for several millennia. Yoga is viewed by many practitioners as a systematic process designed to purify the body and the mind from toxins accumulated due to improper lifestyle choices and negative thinking patterns. Yoga includes components centred on meditation, breathing and activity or postures designed to balance the body’s ‘energy centres’ (13). Intensive yoga exercises may improve the cognitive function among psychiatrically ill and healthy adults (14–20). There are several mechanisms by which the practice of yoga may improve the cognitive function. Yoga emphasises body awareness and involves focusing one’s attention on breathing or specific muscles or parts of body, so yoga may improve more general as well as focused attention. Yoga practice also influences perception by increasing perceptual sensitivity, by selectively ‘shutting out’ undesirable stimuli and by changing distorted perception. Practising yoga improved auditory and visual perception, by increasing sensitivity to various characteristics of the stimuli (e.g. intensity and frequency) (21). A recent study (20) observed that memory functions of male volunteers improved after yoga. In an open trial of yoga (n = 21) versus physical therapy (n = 20) among patients with SZ in India, greater improvement in psychopathology BP1 was reported with yoga therapy (YT) compared with physical therapy. Improvement in clinical severity was noted following 3 weeks of YT, but cognitive function was not evaluated (22). In another study (23), yoga was found to improve facial emotion recognition deficits. The precise physiological basis for the beneficial effects of yoga is unknown and continues to be investigated. Selvamurthy et al. (24) have found that yoga helps achieve a stable autonomic balance. Others have reported that the practice of yoga reduces autonomic arousal (25,26). Because increased physical activity reduces autonomic reactivity to mental stressors (27), it is possible that some of the beneficial effects of yoga are related to stabilisation/normalisation of autonomic function.

The studies reviewed above were conducted by highly trained therapists or clinicians in structured academic centres. Their utility in routine clinical practice is uncertain. Moreover, YT has typically not been used as a cognitive remediation strategy for individuals with impaired cognition. In the present pilot study, we evaluated the impact of YT among individuals with severe psychiatric illnesses. Cognitive domains known to be impaired in these disorders were assessed.

A few weeks ago Chris stopped by a display in a hotel lobby and purchased a copy of the following DVD entitled “Un Documentaire: Manuel Diagnostique et Statistique. Le coup de poker le plus funeste de la psychiatrie.” (The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual: Psychiatry’s biggest gamble).

You may have seen clips of this DVD posted on YouTube. As it happens, the Citizen’s Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) owns the video rights. The English title of the DVD is The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual: Psychiatry’s Deadliest Scam. The CCHR was founded in 1969 by the Church of Scientology and Dr. Thomas Szasz. The extent of the financial relationship now between Scientology and CCHR is unclear from the CCHR website.

I don’t really care about the relationship between these two organizations. Whatever CCHR is, it one one of only about two organizations critical of psychiatry and pharma (the other being the Church of Scientology) that has deep enough pockets to get the message out to the greatest number of people. Disclaimer: I am not a member of, nor have I ever been a member of, or contributor to, the Church of Scientology or CCHR, nor do I intend to be.

Here’s the take home message from the DVD, as you would expect

• mental illness has no diagnostic test
• psychiatry can’t agree on what defines mental illness
• DSM needs a diagnosis in order to bill insurance

There are some clever illustrations of how there is little agreement on what mental illness is. In one scene, a fictitious group of psychiatrists are the celebrity guests in an updated version of the 1950s television game show, “What’s My Line?”  The psychiatrists try to guess what diagnosis the contestants were previously given, and they all get it wrong, all the time.  In another, patients brought hidden cameras into their therapy sessions and tried to get the psychiatrists to explain what their diagnosis really meant. The wobbly and convoluted answers were hilarious.

There is an expensive French language voice-over that adds a bit of unnecessary, but comic Gallic emphasis  to what is already explained. “Non, c’est ridicule!” says a male voice in response to something the female French voice is explaining. He also responds with “C’est tellement incroyable!” (That’s truly unbelievable!)

A problem with the DVD is that it hardly mentions schizophrenia. I ‘m pretty sure I understand why. It’s because the public still believes that there is this horrible mental illness called schizophrenia that is a “true” mental illness. Schizophrenia still persists in being the one diagnosis where psychiatry and pharma hasn’t inflated the numbers by widening the catchment area, as it has done with bipolar, ADD, autism, and depression. There has been no Joe Biederman popularizing the schizophrenic child – the bipolar child is as close as psychiatry has gone so far.  Let’s assume CCHR, in the DVD at least, doesn’t mention that schizophrenia is manageable without drugs and not a real illness to begin with, because if it did, the public wouldn’t buy the rest of what it is saying. CCHR would prefer to work with the diagnoses that are becoming heavily criticized as being over-diagnosed. A rising tide lifts all boats, so any challenging of the the current treatment paradigm for depression and bipolar, with carry schizophrenia with it. There is a slight problem with my logic of a happy ending for all, and that is that psychiatry won’t give up schizophrenia without a fight.

Dear Rossa and Ian,

Just to let you know that Chris and I have had four lessons in May and will then have 3 in June. I will then be away for a few weeks and back in mid-July. I have been very worried about him for the past few weeks. He seems to be drifting again, and in lessons I’m not able to get through to him and to communicate in the way we were able at the start of the year.

To me it feels very like the last time his condition deteriorated, and I’m concerned that he might not be taking his medication or that the balance isn’t right.

I’m sure you are aware of this as well, but I wanted to pass on my concerns. Please don’t hesitate to ring.

Yours sincerely,

Chris’s voice teacher
 
……
This well-meaning message that I received yesterday is a prime example of a good reason not to divulge your relative’s diagnosis to other people almost EVER, and a reminder of how the public has internalized pharma’s message. I think I know what’s going on, and I’m doubtful that it’s relapse (although, once again, it has all the hallmarks), but I certainly can see where his teacher is coming from. I phoned her immediately and explained the way I see it. Chris is tired of voice lessons, doesn’t feel like he’s progressing, and has found musical theatre and a small job to be a welcome change of pace. But Chris doesn’t yet have a firm foundation of self, and allows his conflicted self to act like he’s splitting apart. “Normal” people expect a person to show a consistent face across different spheres of activity. Chris hasn’t mastered this technique.

In March, he took a month off from voice lessons and I encouraged him not to go back for a while because, from what he was telling me, he needed a break Apparently, he resumed his lessons in May, probably out of some misguided sense of selflessness and fear of disappointing his teacher. CHRIS – THIS DOESN’T WORK! You are either there and fully participating or you are physcially not there. But take a stand! Don’t be there but be mentally vacant! Stop being all over the map!

(N.B. Chris’s psychiatrist tells me she’s pleased with his recent progress. Go figure.)

Today’s New York Times Opiniator was written by a man who suffered extensive maternal deprivation at a very early age. Read the entire piece here.

May 31, 2012, 12:00 pm

Fortunate Son

By EMILLIO MESA

But after I was attacked, when she fought for me in the emergency room and then nursed me back to health in her home, that finally changed. Psychologists typically believed that the most important bond between a mother and child occurred during the first three years of life. If a child suffered maternal deprivation, he would be emotionally damaged for life. I don’t think that’s true. Getting mugged was a blessing in disguise. It let my mom and me make up for the time we’d lost. It took 14 months of living with her, but I’d finally come home.

Outdoor and indoor voice is a phrase I learned from Chris’s nursery school teacher many, many moons ago. As I entered the school I witnessed a little tyke running around screaming his cheery morning hello at about a thousand decibels. “That’s an outdoor voice, Kyle,” said the ever patient Karen. “We use our nice, soft indoor voices when we are inside the school.”

Well, I learned this week-end that Chris has an outdoor voice and an indoor voice. His indoor voice around our apartment is sometimes hard to hear, and his indoor persona is kind of glum and rarely smiles. Not so, the outdoor Chris. As an official greeter at church, the outdoor Chris warmly greeted people in a hail and hearty way, smiling broadly while firmly grasping and pumping hands. He was the man.

The indoor Chris, I deduce, is a product of the monotony of living at home with his parents and having no regular social interactions through job or school. Judging from the performance I saw this week-end, this indoor personal will eventually change as Chris’s life gathers momentum.

Last week I read a fantastic article on Lisbeth Riis Cooper’s blog at the Mad in America site. Her guest post is written by a mother who figured out how to help her son, and she mirrors my own thoughts about how to help an adult child recover.

Four years ago my husband accepted a job managing an American manufacturing facility in Shanghai. For one fun, adventurous year, I lived with my husband. For the past three years, my husband and I have lived separately because our youngest adult child has needed a family touchstone in the States.

I am writing this entry while sitting in my husband’s flat in Shanghai. This is my first vacation away from my son in nearly three years. My husband and I have been able to visit Singapore and the ancient and awe-inspiring temples of Cambodia. I was a little nervous about taking this trip, but all is perfectly calm on the home front.

I feel so blessed to share our family’s healing and recovery. Understand we’re still very much in recovery, but healing is coming as swiftly as the onset of our son’s distress.

The author writes that healing can start happening rapidly once a parent or relative grasps what it takes on their part to help recovery. Read the rest of her post here. Don’t miss it. Skyblue, a frequent commenter on my blog, has added some excellent commentary to her post.

It was amazingly simple, a stroke of brilliance, really. No twelve step program needed. I should have known earlier how to do it, since I had used the same technique to magically eradicate Chris’s so-called schizophrenia and to lose the “baby fat” that I was still carrying around in my late twenties. I’m sure you’ve already guessed what I’m about to say. All I did was to stop feeling worried and guilty. Magic. An overnight cure! I wasn’t drinking any less, I was merely feeling not at all guilty — in fact, I was feeling quite enthusiastic —about what I was drinking. Sure, I still over-indulge on occasion, but I am no longer berating myself while pouring red wine into increasingly smaller beakers and trying to pretend that I can stretch one unit of alcohol to last all evening!  Tried that – it was a constant reminder that I thought I had a problem. Luckily I live in a culture that values the grape. School events that I attended on behalf of my children always served beer and wine, although they may have put a stop to that now. Church dinners are always B.Y.O.B. Gas stations often come equipped with bars (I swear I’m not making this up!) There seems to be no cultural guilt trip here about the merits of drinking.

Perhaps I am suffering from agnosognia, the inability to recognize that I’ve got problems – but hey – so what? I’m enjoying myself these days. I enjoy myself by refusing to read medical news. It’s all so contradictory, anyway, and I’m a bit of a hypochondriac. Take coffee for example. My boss gleefully informed me the other day that research now shows that three cups of coffee a day adds to longevity. His coffee addiction (three cups)  is obviously no longer a problem to him. Presto chango.

If the DSM-5 expansion of the criteria for addiction takes hold, there is a simple solution, the same as there is for “schizophrenia.” Don’t consider your addiction a problem, because you can waste much time and valuable creative resources not really fixing the problem, just making yourself feel the worse for it.

Have a good week-end!

Here are some random thoughts of mine on mis-diagnosis.  I haven’t got the time to refine my thinking and tweak this post in time for my self-imposed deadline. I’ll look at this tomorrow in the sober light of day and make any needed adjustments.

The APA convention and the Occupy the APA demonstration against the DSM-5 have set many groups like the ISEPP (International Society for Ethical Psychology and Psychiatry) to try to come to grips with what is meant by being diagnosed and by being mis-diagnosed. Most of us are struggling to put into words why we think the initial diagnosis is a sham, and what exactly mis-diagnosis implies.

Here’s my take on this. Bear with me. First, let’s consult our common understanding on words and their opposites.

management         mismanagement
treat                      mistreat
handle                   mishandle
place                     misplace

We know that the second word in each column is the botching of the first. If you are mistreated, this means you are not well treated, and if something is mismanaged, it is not well managed.

Many English words beginning with “mis” mean that the original root word has been negated, or mishandled, mistaken, misled, etc.

So, what does this mean for diagnosis and mis-diagnosis?

I believe that my son was correctly diagnosed by the DSM as “schizophrenic.” I also believe that he was mis-diagnosed. When I say mis-diagnosed, I don’t mean that the diagnosis was wrong (he ticked most of the boxes for whatever it is that schizophrenia is supposed to be) – but I believe that the diagnosis was mismanaged, mistreated and mishandled, and I certainly was “misled.”

Once you are diagnosed by psychiatry, then this diagnosis should properly managed, treated, and handled if it is a valid diagnosis to begin with. If you are diagnosed with herpes, for example, the patient should expect proper follow-through, meaning proper care, treatment and cure. If you truly had herpes and you were well treated, your symptoms should clear up.

What does my interpretation say about psychiatric diagnosis? If you are correctly diagnosed, and correctly treated by psychiatry, then your symptoms should disappear. But they generally don’t, do they, under the care of maintream psychiatry?

Mainstream psychiatry will rarely if not ever, admit to a misdiagnosis, because that would imply that they couldn’t manage, treat, or handle, the diagnosis.

Therefore, most of the psychiatrically diagnosed who are still struggling with the label, have been mis-diagnosed,  in the spirit of being mistreated, mishandled, mismanaged, etc.

“I’ve got a bus load of schizophrenics that I’ve driven down from New York to demonstrate against the psychiatrists,” the middle aged lady hollered across the room to the owner of the diner. No doubt she was relishing the thought that she lived to tale the tale. Ian and I ignored her while we continued to eat our breakfast of fried eggs and coffee. 

The diner owner chimed in from behind the cash register. “Yeah, do me a favor and get those occupiers outta here. I’ve had enough of those people, coming down last week ago and disrupting everything. You can take all of those mentally ill people back home with you, the sooner the better!”

“But I was surprised,” mused the driver, “how well behaved that bunch were.”

Ian and I paid our bill then went next door to the Quaker Meeting House in Philadelphia to wait for the presentations to begin. If I ever had any illusions that Occupying the APA in Philadelphia was going to resonate with the common man, woman, well, obviously there’s still lots of work to be done. One of the themes of the MindFreedom campaign in Philadelphia was to point out how destructive labels are to people. We need look no further than the bus driver and the diner guy as ample proof that labeling is alive and well, particularly when it comes to schizophrenia and schizophrenics. The common man thinks Psycho and Norman Bates and wouldn’t have it any other way. We all like a good scare. Hollywood needs the occasional schizophrenic to fatten its bottom line,  just like the American Psychiatric Association needs the myth of uncurable schizophrenia to do the same to its.

The only encouraging part of the APA approving the DSM-5 this week was Dr. Allen Frances’ call for the fox to stop running the chicken coop – meaning there should be fewer psychiatrists on the DSM revision panel and more “supposedly” (my word, not his) neutral parties like the NIMH and the World Health Organization with a greater say in its revision. Don’t expect any changes for now for the schizophrenia label – it’s too big a revenue source and a great way to scare patients and relatives into submission to psychiatry. Psychiatry doesn’t want to cure schizophrenia, it merely wants an orderly bus.

Parents, if you are searching today for help for your son or daughter, it is worth your while to read what Sky Blue Sight has to say about how to treat the mentally ill. Sky Blue speaks from the experience of someone once labelled “schizophrenic.”

How Not to Cure Schizophrenia

The title of this post applies to most of those mental illnesses that have been classified and labeled as incurable brain diseases by the Pharmaceutical dominated contemporary mental health establishment.

How not to treat the mentally ill? Don’t treat them as subhumans or objects. Stop thinking of ‘treatment’ as ‘control’. Don’t try to treat only the secondary (‘positive’) symptoms and ignore the consciousness, the personality structure and emotional functioning of human beings.

How to treat them? First allow them to be ill as much as possible (ie do not stop the human process) while at the same time facilitate them to full emotional functioning and guiding them to well being.

This is the point where the psychiatrist control freaks throw up their hands and say that leaves them with nothing. The truth is there are very few human beings that stay out of contact with reality and the environment forever due to mental illness, if any. Roll your shirt-sleeves up, find those contact points and get to work! You’ve all got a long way to go, all you in the contemporary mental health system , a lot of knowledge to catch up on, it’s time to get started on finding out what you can do by listening to those who are there, and who have been there, instead of laboring on what you think you can’t do.

Read the rest of this highly informative article here.