Acupuncture And Depression - An Alternative To Drug Therapy
By Aubrey Burke
Depression is one of the leading disorders in
media is permeated with advertisements for one anti-depressant or another. It’s
difficult, if not impossible, to get through a single evening of television
without seeing babies crying and Mommy’s who are too down to move or little
cartoon stick figures selling Americans yet another medication for depression.
Is that and psychotherapy the only treatment for depression? No. Recently,
studies have connected the health benefits of acupuncture with depression.
Drugs versus Acupuncture and Depression:
As widespread a problem as depression is in the
not the panacea that many hope they will be after that first trip to the
pharmacy. In fact, roughly half of the people who seek help for this disorder
actually receive that help through drugs or psychotherapy alone. For 3000
years, traditional Chinese medical practitioners have treated everything from
headaches to menopause with acupuncture.
Is it possible, then, to treat depression with acupuncture? Studies have
recently shown that it is possible to connect depression and acupuncture, and
with benefits that include low cost and minimal side effects. Unlike drugs and
expensive psychotherapy sessions that take tremendous time and money,
acupuncture lasts an up to hour and may be obtained at a fraction of the cost.
Additionally, the side effects of acupuncture with sterilized needles are
limited to such minor issues as a potential bruise here and there.
A Case Study:
In 1998, researchers at the
of
double-blind study of the effectiveness of acupuncture on depression. The
results demonstrated a dramatic decrease in symptoms in more than half of the
women tested. More specifically, seventy percent of the women in the study
experienced a fifty percent reduction in noticeable symptoms of depression.1
The study lasted for two months. During this time, each patient was given
twelve acupuncture sessions with the bulk of them received during the first
month of treatment. The patients were assigned to one of three groups. The
first received immediate acupuncture for depression. The second group received
acupuncture treatment for non-specific reasons, and the third group was
wait-listed for eight weeks then treated with acupuncture for depression.
While the test group for this study was too small to be considered
ground-breaking medically, it is certainly worth considering for anyone who
suffers from debilitating depression. For some people acupuncture and
depression may well be the key to unlocking the chains that bind them to
medications that have been linked to everything from incontinence to suicide.
Aubrey Burke is a freelance journalist who has written for various sites and
online journals including http://www.infoabouteverything.com
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