BANGALORE, INDIA, July 9, 2002: A short stay in a temple or place of worship can actually improve your mental health, a study has shown. Researchers in India found that a six-week stay at a Hindu temple can produce the same improvement in people with severe psychiatric disorders as a month-long course of standard drugs. According to science journal New Scientist, a team led by Mr. Ramanathan Raguram of the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences in Bangalore studied all 31 people who came for help and stayed at the Muthuswamy temple between June and August, 2000. The patients were evaluated by a trained psychiatrist. Six were diagnosed with delusional disorders, 23 with paranoid schizophrenia and two with bipolar disorder. At the end of their stay, their scores on a test called the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale had improved by an average of nearly 20 percent. No specific rituals or ceremonies intended to improve mental health were performed in the temple. The patients attended a simple morning prayer for 15 minutes, and then spent the rest of the day helping out with routine temple work. Mr. Assen Jablensky, an expert on mental disorders at the University of Western Australia, noted that such findings were not specific to India, or any particular faith. For example, he said that a “treatment protocol” in many ways similar to the healing temple of Muthuswamy has been practiced at the traditional therapeutic village of Aro in Nigeria.
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