impact of yoga on military personnel with post traumatic stress disorder

• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2047/d20002098

The goal of this study was to evaluate the impact of yoga on post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, resilience, and mindfulness in military personnel. Participants were 12 military members who met the diagnostic criteria for PTSD. The study assessed pre-post within-subject scores on PTSD, resilience and mindfulness measures. It also compared, through benchmarking, results obtained from the PTSD measure utilized in this study (Clinician Administered PTSD Scale: CAPS; Blake et al., 1998) with those of other military intervention studies of PTSD using the CAPS as an outcome measure. Results of within-subject analyses supported the study's primary hypothesis that yoga would reduce PTSD symptoms but did not support the hypothesis that yoga would increase mindfulness and resilience in this population. Benchmarking results indicated that although the current intervention was significantly more effective than the control condition, it was also significantly less effective than the aggregated treatment benchmark derived from other studies.