Nursing Continuing Professional Development
HOURSO n average, 20% of American adults, or roughly 50 million people, experience a mental illness annually. 1,2 For U.S. residents under age 45, mood disorders are the third leading cause of hospitalization (after pregnancy and birth). 3 Psychiatric comorbidities are common and may contribute to increased length of stay and cost. 2,4,5 Patients admitted with psychiatric illness are often placed in highly controlled, locked environments. 6 Whether hospitalized voluntarily or involuntarily, these patients experience stress, anxiety, and frustration due to feelings of confinement, the perceived violation of their personal rights, and rules they often view as unpredictable. 7 Given that these patients require interventions to address both their mental and physical health, 2 there is a clear need to prioritize evidence-based practice (EBP) in attending to their complex needs. Ideally, treatment would involve both psychotherapeutic and psychiatric (medical) interventions, but such services are not consistently available. 2 To date, there is a dearth of literature describing care for hospitalized patients with a combination of acute medical and psychiatric disorders. This arti-cle adds to the understanding of how nurses can use yoga with meditation as a complementary therapy to improve care for these complex patients.
BACKGROUNDEvidence synthesis. Working with the health science librarian at our academic medical center, we conducted a comprehensive literature search of the CINAHL, EBSCO, Cochrane, ProQuest Central, and PubMed Central databases, using the search terms mindfulness, yoga, sense of well-being, yoga as therapy, yoga in inpatient psychiatric units, yoga and mental illness, conscious meditation, stress, anxiety, therapeutic yoga, and benefits of yoga. We then reviewed the identified articles for relevance and to guide the design of our proposed EBP practice change and evaluation.Yoga-based treatments are one of a group of complementary or alternative emerging therapies recognized as beneficial for people with various psychiatric disorders, including depression, anxiety, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder, in addition to schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders. 2, 8-10 Such treatments are recognized by the National Institutes How nurses used complementary therapy to reduce patients' anxiety and distress.