More and more doctors are prescribing mind therapies such as yoga and meditation reports a study. The study was published in the journal, Archives of Internal Medicine.
The researchers found that more than one-third of Americans use mind therapies and the number is increasing every other day. The researchers stated that one in 30 Americans using mind therapies were mostly prescribed by their doctors. "There's good evidence to support using mind-body therapies clinically. Still, we didn't expect to see provider referral rates that were quite so high," said the lead researcher, Dr. Aditi Nerurkar, an integrative medicine fellow at Harvard Medical School.
The researchers examined the data obtained from 2007 U.S National Health Interview Survey in which 23,000 households had participated. They found that 3 percent or in other words 6.3 million people used mind therapies after having referred by a physician. Also, they found that these people were sicker and often visited health care system when compared to those who were not referred by a doctor.
"What we learned suggests that providers are referring their patients for mind-body therapies as a last resort once conventional therapeutic options have failed. It makes us wonder whether referring patients for these therapies earlier in the treatment process could lead to less use of the health-care system and, possibly, better outcomes for these patients," Nerurkar said.
Another researcher, Dr. Russell Phillips, chief of primary care at Beth Israel and the study's senior author said, "These data suggest that mind-body therapies have really become a mainstream approach to care." However, he added that more research is required to help doctors and patients in deciding about using mind-body therapies.
