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cohol and drug-related problems in families. We have also used yoga in an in-patient setting both for male and female patients for many years. Female patients especially have accepted yoga very well. It helped them to overcome the stress of early experiences after withdrawal syndrome. We also offered the addresses of yoga classes in Prague to our patients, so that they could continue after discharge from hospital. We have used yoga extensively but can't provide any hard data about its specific effects because it is integrated in a complex therapeutic scheme, including therapeutic community living, group and family therapy, therapeutic group, art therapy and so on.
Medicine, and maybe even more so psychiatry, is a stressful profession. That is why mental health problems including substance abuse are, according to yarious authors, more common among doctors in comparison with the general population. The use of yoga has proven effective in the prevention of professional stress amongst those doctors who are willing to spare the time to learn and practise it.
I will conclude with the use of yoga in rehabilitatio i medicine in the Czech Republic, which has about three hundred professionals as its members. To provide at least some data I asked at the meeting of this body how many members present practised yoga themselves to keep their own fitness. Most members answered positively, only two of them negatively. I am sure that yoga is as important for their own health as for the health of their patients. They benefit from the medicine which they prescribe to others. We certainly should be grateful to those who have preserved and developed the heritage of yoga.
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