Journal of Psychiatry

Abstract

Impact of the Art of Living Programme on Burnout and Organizational Role Stress among Animal Husbandry Personnel

Subhash R Soni, Vyas JM, Pestonjee DM, Kher HN, Thakkar KA and Vijaya Lakshmi Yanduri

Objective: To assess the impact of the Art of Living programme on Burnout and Organizational Role Stress (ORS) by systematic application of powerful ancient techniques of meditation, yoga, sudarshan kriya and breathing techniques on group of people among Animal Husbandry Personnel.

Setting: Eight districts of Gujarat state, India.

Design: Descriptive cross-sectional.

Subjects: Two hundred and thirty six (236) Veterinarians and One hundred and forty six (146) Paraveterinarians of Animal Husbandry Department.

Outcome measures: The findings relate to the status of Burnout and ORS factors in case of Veterinarians and Paraveterinarians of Animal Husbandry Department. The findings also assess the changes in burnout and organizational role stress before and after the intervention.

Methods: The Pareek’s Occupational Stress scale and Maslach Burnout scale (MBI-GS) were used for data collection, while central tendencies, frequency, t-test, Co-efficient of Correlation (‘r’) were used for statistical analysis. The data were collected two times, i.e. pre and post intervention.

Results: The data revealed that majority of veterinarians and paraveterinarians were having high Organizational Role Stress and low level of exhaustion and cynicism (~50%). The Organizational Role Stress varied for different role stresses in the range of 40% to 77% except Self Role Distance (SRD) which reduced to a considerable extent after the Art of Living program on Meditation, Sudarshan Kriya and Breathing Techniques. The percentage increased for lower category after the Art of Living programme. The personal efficacy increased in both the categories of the employees from 46% to 65% and 48% to 63% in the case of veterinarians and para veterinarians, respectively. Further, significant difference between pre and post score was observed in case of all three burnout sub-scales viz., Exhaustion, Cynicism and Personal Efficacy.

Conclusion: It could be concluded that the Art of Living Program through Meditation, Sudarshan Kriya and Breathing Techniques had a significant impact on reducing all Organizational Role Stress and Burnout. The findings lead us to the unmistakable conclusion that Art of Living programme when conducted under proper environment have a salutary beneficial impact on organizational wellbeing of the individual.