Acupuncture may offer a drug-free alternative for treating depression in pregnant women, researchers have found.
Acupuncture may offer a drug-free alternative for treating depression in pregnant women, researchers have found.
It's estimated that 3 to 5 percent of pregnant women are diagnosed with depression. Antidepressant medications are one treatment option, but there are safety concerns. Because of the potential for harm from medications, many pregnant women with depression may prefer psychotherapy or other non-drug options. Acupuncture has been used for more than 2,000 years in Chinese medicine to treat a wide variety of ailments. According to traditional medicine, specific acupuncture points on the skin are connected to internal pathways that conduct energy, or qi ("chee"), and stimulating these points with a fine needle promotes the healthy flow of qi. Modern research has most often focused on the effects of acupuncture on painful conditions, like chronic back pain and migraines.
To see if acupuncture benefits pregnant women suffering from depression, researchers followed 150 pregnant women with major depression. The researchers tested depression-specific acupuncture against massage and acupuncture sessions that according to traditional Chinese medicine does not specifically target depression. The researchers randomly assigned 52 women to receive depression-specific acupuncture twice a week for four weeks, then weekly for another four weeks. Another 49 women received control acupuncture and 49 received massage. All completed a standard measure of depression severity at the outset and again after four and eight weeks of treatment.
It was found that after eight weeks, women who received depression-specific acupuncture were more likely to have a treatment response - meaning the severity of their symptoms fell by at least half and they no longer met all of the criteria for diagnosing major depression. Overall, 63 percent responded to the therapy, versus 37 percent of the control acupuncture group and half of the massage group.
But while the findings are promising, questions still remain - including whether acupuncture as practiced in the real world can reliably help women with depression. The researchers speculate that acupuncture may help ease pain by altering signals among nerve cells or affecting the release of various chemicals of the central nervous system.
It's estimated that 3 to 5 percent of pregnant women are diagnosed with depression. Antidepressant medications are one treatment option, but there are safety concerns. Because of the potential for harm from medications, many pregnant women with depression may prefer psychotherapy or other non-drug options. Acupuncture has been used for more than 2,000 years in Chinese medicine to treat a wide variety of ailments. According to traditional medicine, specific acupuncture points on the skin are connected to internal pathways that conduct energy, or qi ("chee"), and stimulating these points with a fine needle promotes the healthy flow of qi. Modern research has most often focused on the effects of acupuncture on painful conditions, like chronic back pain and migraines.
To see if acupuncture benefits pregnant women suffering from depression, researchers followed 150 pregnant women with major depression. The researchers tested depression-specific acupuncture against massage and acupuncture sessions that according to traditional Chinese medicine does not specifically target depression. The researchers randomly assigned 52 women to receive depression-specific acupuncture twice a week for four weeks, then weekly for another four weeks. Another 49 women received control acupuncture and 49 received massage. All completed a standard measure of depression severity at the outset and again after four and eight weeks of treatment.
It was found that after eight weeks, women who received depression-specific acupuncture were more likely to have a treatment response - meaning the severity of their symptoms fell by at least half and they no longer met all of the criteria for diagnosing major depression. Overall, 63 percent responded to the therapy, versus 37 percent of the control acupuncture group and half of the massage group.
But while the findings are promising, questions still remain - including whether acupuncture as practiced in the real world can reliably help women with depression. The researchers speculate that acupuncture may help ease pain by altering signals among nerve cells or affecting the release of various chemicals of the central nervous system.
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