Meditation Alleviates Psychological Distress and Sleep Quality in COVID-19 Patients during Home Isolation

Abstract

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic have led to both physical and psychological outbreaks in lives of many people, especially among quarantined people. To handle this mood disorders of isolated COVID-19 patient’s in home care, noninvasive OM chanting has been adopted to study its effect on stress, anxiety, depression, quality of sleep and life.Materials and Methods: 56 participants with the mean age of 41 years confirmed with COVID-19 infection under the Saveetha home care program were selected. The Experimental group practiced OM chanting for 20mins for a duration of 14 days. DASS-21 and Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index was assessed before and after the intervention.Results: After 14 days’ intervention, significant decrease in depression (13.26±4.52 to 7.84±3.96; p=0.01), anxiety (14.38±5.28 to 8.29±4.73; p=0.05) and stress (16.88±4.90 to 7.32±3.91; p=0.05) were noted. In addition to that over all sleep quality (11.24± 3.89 to 6.70± 3.51) and quality of life also improved among the patients after the 14 days OM chanting.Conclusion: The practice of OM chanting for two weeks showed notable reduction in the DASS-21 in comparison to the first base assessment. The increase in the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index was also recorded. In further, larger sample size and long-term intervention will be studied with a robust research design.

Keywords: OM Chanting; Meditation; Anxiety; Stress; Depression; Quality of sleep