Bangalore: The National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS) is involved in research in integrating Indian Systems of Medicine (ISM) in the treatment of mental illness, and currently a yoga research group is studying the effects of yoga on patients with chronic schizophrenia, according to D. Nagaraja, Director and Vice-Chancellor of NIMHANS.

Speaking at the inauguration of the national workshop on "Management of chikungunya through Ayurveda and Siddha" organised by the Regional Research Institute (Ayurveda) under the Central Council for Research in Ayurveda and Siddha (CCRAS) here on Friday, Dr. Nagaraja said with the help of the functional MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging), the research group was trying to find out which part of the brain got activated while yoga was being performed.

Dr. Nagaraja said that even though the Indian Systems of Medicine were gaining popularity, it had not been given the status of a medical discipline, especially in the West and was only considered an alternative system of treatment. "This is probably because not much research has happened in the Indian Systems of Medicine in the last few decades, and practitioners mostly depend on the age-old information. There needs to be more scientific research in this field," he said.

Dr. Nagaraja said that in different regions of the country, different methodologies in Ayurveda and Siddha were practised and there was no consensus among practitioners from these regions. Standardisation of the discipline needed to be done, so that there was uniformity in the discipline.

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