Yoga for military service personnel with PTSD: A single arm study

This study evaluated the effects of yoga on posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, resilience, and mindfulness in military personnel. Participants completing the yoga intervention were 12 current or former military personnel who met the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders-Fourth Edition-Text Revision (DSM-IV-TR) diagnostic criteria for PTSD. Results were also benchmarked against other military intervention studies of PTSD using the Clinician Administered PTSD Scale (CAPS; Blake et al., 2000) as an outcome measure. Results of within-subject analyses supported the study's primary hypothesis that yoga would reduce PTSD symptoms (d = 0.768; t = 2.822; p = .009) but did not support the hypothesis that yoga would significantly increase mindfulness (d = 0.392; t = -0.9500; p = .181) and resilience (d = 0.270; t = -1.220; p = .124) in this population. Benchmarking results indicated that, as compared with the aggregated treatment benchmark (d = 1.074) obtained from published clinical trials, the current study's treatment effect (d = 0.768) was visibly lower, and compared with the waitlist control benchmark (d = 0.156), the treatment effect in the current study was visibly higher.