The effect of yoga on care burden, quality of life and psychological well being of caregivers individuals with special needs: a randomized controlled trial

This study examined the effects of technology-assisted yoga on care burden, quality of life, and psychological well-being among caregivers of individuals with special needs. This study is designed pretest-posttest, follow-up, and control group randomized controlled trial. Data were collected from a sample of 60 caregivers of individuals with special needs. Data collection involved the use of a Socio-demographic Data Collection Form, the Caregiver Burden Scale, the Multidimensional Index of Life Quality, and the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-Being Scale. Measurements were taken before the yoga intervention, as well as at the 3rd and 6th months during the intervention. Statistical analyses included the student’s t test, Mann-Whitney U test, chi-square test, repeated measures ANOVA, and Fisher LSD. SPSS 24.0 and STATISTICA software packages were utilized for data analysis. The effect size and post hoc power were assessed using G Power 3.1.9.6. Initial caregiver scores were found to be moderate. Significant differences were observed among the groups, over time, and in group*time comparisons for various sub-dimensions of the care burden scale, life quality scale, and mental well-being scale. The study yielded large effect sizes and a post hoc power of over .94 for all scales in the posttest and follow-up analyses. The findings indicate that a 6-month yoga program for caregivers of individuals with special needs reduced care burden and enhanced quality of life and psychological well-being. Trial Registration: This study is registered at https://clinicaltrials.gov/ (registration number: NCT05218291).