Acupuncture for Depression

How Chinese medicine understands depression

In Chinese medicine, depression is not one thing. The same diagnosis from your doctor can sit on top of quite different patterns, and the pattern decides the treatment. These are TCM ideas about how the body and mood connect, not a biomedical explanation.

The common patterns are:

• Liver Qi stagnation. Mood feels stuck. You sigh a lot, feel irritable or frustrated, and may have a tight chest, tight shoulders or an upset stomach. Symptoms are often worse with stress. This is the pattern most often linked with low mood.
• Heart and Spleen deficiency. A quieter, depleted picture: tiredness, poor appetite, worry, poor sleep and a pale face. In Chinese medicine the Spleen makes the Qi and Blood that the Heart needs to settle the mind (Shen).
• Phlegm obstructing. You feel heavy, foggy and slow, as if thinking through cotton wool, often with a sluggish appetite.
• Kidney Yang deficiency. Low drive with cold hands and feet, low back ache and a wish to sleep a lot, often worse in winter.

Where anxiety is more about too much movement, depression in Chinese medicine is more often about what is stuck or run down. Many people have a mix of patterns.

What treatment involves

Treatment here is support that works alongside your family doctor, psychiatrist, psychologist or counsellor. It does not replace medication or talk therapy.

At your first visit I ask a lot of questions about your mood, sleep, appetite, energy, digestion and stress, and about any medication you take. I also look at your tongue and take your pulse. The initial visit at the clinic in Keswick is 75 minutes and includes your diagnosis and first treatment. Follow-ups are 60 minutes.

Acupuncture aims to move what is stuck, calm the mind and support sleep and energy. Points are commonly chosen on the arms, legs, head and back to suit your pattern. When sleep is part of the problem, treatment looks at that too.

Chinese herbal medicine can be added. The formula is written for your pattern and dispensed at the clinic. Because many people with depression take prescription medicine, tell me everything you take, including supplements, so the formula can be checked against it.

Plan on 5–10 treatments to judge progress, and keep your doctor in the loop.

Between visits

• Keep your medical care going. Take medication as prescribed and keep your appointments with your doctor or therapist.
• Move a little every day. A short walk outside, especially in daylight, is a good place to start.
• Keep regular hours. Getting up at the same time each day helps steady sleep and energy.
• Stay in touch with people. A short call or visit counts, even when you do not feel like it.
• Go easy on alcohol and cannabis. Both can make low mood and sleep worse.

When to see your doctor first

Depression is a medical condition. See your family doctor if low mood has lasted more than two weeks, if you have not been assessed, or if your symptoms are getting worse.

Get help right away if:

• You have thoughts of suicide or of harming yourself. Call or text 9-8-8, the Suicide Crisis Helpline, any time. In an emergency, call 911 or go to the nearest emergency department.
• You feel unsafe, or cannot care for yourself or others who depend on you.
• You have depression after having a baby, or very high moods alternating with low ones.
• Your mood has changed after starting or stopping a medicine.
• You are using alcohol or drugs to cope.