title: Yoga improves attention and self-esteem in underprivileged girl student.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  A student under optimal stress does bring out his or her best; however, extreme stress can result in mental health problems and deteriorates their academic performance. Students who esteem themselves low are most likely to engage in destructive and self-destructive behaviors. Moreover, excessive stress is harmful to academic performance and may lead to dropping out in student. Can Yoga be of benefit in students for improving their attention and self-esteem (SE)?
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To assess attention and SE in girls undergoing Integrated Yoga Module (IYM).
  
  
  METHODS
  Sixty low-income high school girls with 15.17 + 0.64 years of mean age participated in this single group pre-post study. The data was collected before and after 5 days of IYM.
  
  
  METHODS
  Means, standard deviations, Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, and Wilcoxon signed rank test were used to analyze the data with the help of SPSS 16.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The data analysis showed 9.04% increase (P = 0.001) in SE scores, whereas d2 test for attention revealed 10.12% increase (P < 0.001) in total number of symbols processed scores and 44.73% decrease (P < 0.001) in total number of errors.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The present study suggests that of IYM can result in improvement of attention and SE among students and thereby enhancing their mental health and can help them in improving their academic achievement. Efforts aimed at reducing mental health problems among students may focus more on implementing effective and culturally acceptable interventions, such as Yoga, counseling, and social support. Additional well-designed studies are needed before a strong recommendation can be made.
authors.affiliation: Department of Yoga and Management Studies, S-VYASA University, Bangalore, India.
authors.forename: Jaspal Kaur
authors.initials: JK
authors.lastname: Sethi
authors.forename: H R
authors.initials: HR
authors.lastname: Nagendra
authors.forename: Tikhe
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Sham Ganpat
keywords: Attention; girl students; integrated yoga module; mental health; self-esteem