I have treated many cases of depression and psychological issues with acupuncture and sometimes with both acupuncture and herbs. I have had a great deal of success. There has been many discussions on this subject and how effective acupuncture is on depression, PTSD, and other psychological issues and trauma. I have treated these issues with a combination of the points in the upper back, the heavenly points, esoteric acupuncture and five element acupuncture and herbs for stress reduction. Here is a research that was done on the subject: Researchers found one in three
patients was no longer depressed after three months of acupuncture or
counseling, compared to one in five who received neither treatment."For
people who have depression, who have tried various medical options, who
are still not getting the benefit they want, they should try
acupuncture or counseling as options that are now known to be clinically
effective," said Hugh MacPherson, the study's lead author from the
University of York in the UK.Previous
studies looking at whether acupuncture helps ease depression have been
inconclusive. Those studies were also small and didn't compare
acupuncture to other treatment options."What's more important for the patient is does it work in practice and that is the question we were asking," MacPherson said.For
their study, he and his colleagues recruited 755 people with moderate
or severe depression. The researchers split participants into three
groups: 302 were randomly assigned to receive 12 weekly acupuncture
sessions, another 302 received weekly counseling sessions and 151
received usual care only.About
70 percent of people had taken antidepressants in the three months
before the study and about half reported taking pain medications. People
did not have to stop taking their medicine to participate in the study.At
the outset, participants had an average depression score of 16 on a
scale from 0 to 27, with higher scores symbolizing more severe
depression. A 16 is considered moderately severe depression.After
three months, people assigned to the acupuncture group had an average
score of about 9 - on the higher end of the mild depression category.
Scores fell to 11 among members of the counseling group and about 13 in
the usual care group, both considered moderate depression.Participants
who received acupuncture or counseling saw larger improvements over
three months than those who had neither treatment. Those benefits
remained for an additional three months after the treatments stopped.However,
any differences between acupuncture and counseling could have been due
to chance, the researchers reported Tuesday in PLOS Medicine.They
found doctors would need to treat seven people using acupuncture and 10
people with counseling for one person to no longer be depressed."What
this says is if you don't get completely better, there are other
options," Dr. Philip Muskin, a psychiatrist at Columbia University
Medical Center in New York, told Reuters Health."One
option would be to take a different medication, but by this study these
would be valid options," said Muskin, who was not involved with the new
research.He cautioned,
however, that counseling and acupuncture are not replacements for
medication. The majority of study participants were still taking
antidepressants at the end of the three months.Muskin said the study also doesn't show what types of patients respond best to acupuncture or counseling."What I can't tell from this study is who's who. Not everybody got better," he said.MacPherson said it's best to ask patients for their treatment preference."If you talk to people, they would almost always have a leaning one way or the other," he said.Acupuncture is only covered by health insurance in the UK for chronic pain, MacPherson said. In the U.S., some plans also cover acupuncture for pain or nausea.According
to online information from the Mayo Clinic, the risks of acupuncture
are low if people hire competent and certified practitioners.
Complications can include soreness, organ injury and infections."Cleary acupuncture is a new option," MacPherson said. "This is the first evidence that acupuncture really helps." |