Treating Depression with Acupuncture: Guide to Alternative Medical Treatments

Video Transcript

"Something that really affects the quality of life is depression. We have a lot of people that come in and they are wanting to work on depression, and it can be in a variety of different stages. It can be that they are struggling with symptomatic depression, like that something has clearly happened and they are struggling with handling that. And that causes a different stress on the body than someone who has a chemical imbalance. So we have people that come in, kind of on the whole range there. We have people that are on medication and want to stay on medication and we have people that are on medication that want to be off of medication. So we actually work with wherever people are on that. People that are on medication, there are times that I definitely feel people should stay on their medication and I will make that recommendation. And I will only actually work with people who are on medication if they are actually seeing some one at the same time like a psychotherapist or a psychiatrist because I want to make sure that they’re being watched in ways that we’re not trained in. But when I’m working with somebody with depression sometimes they’re on medication that causes side effects that they’re really uncomfortable with. Like they’re having sleep problems for instance so we can work with that. And it helps, what Orientalists will do is help to kind of even out whatever kind of ups and downs they may have on that medication. And then we have some people come in that want to get off their medication and their doctor says yeah that’d be great and I think that you are okay with this. And so I work with them then being able to make sure that they don’t have side effects coming off and that their system is evenly balanced out so that when they’re off their meds they actually are fine. Like they do really well. I have several people who come in and then sent their friends who are also on medication. And then I have people who are just having a hard time. You know, some people are just struggling because they have something going on in their life and that’s a type of stress. And so one of the ways that I work with that is to be able to just support them in that period of time and I may make certain recommendations about that too. But depression is one of those things where people get stuck, like they’re really stuck and it’s very hard for people to get help or to admit that they are stuck. Acupuncture is like an easy way to deal with that. Like I tell people that if that’s the only thing they can do this week, maybe just coming in and you get to lay down basically for an hour and you get a massage and you get to relax. A lot of people say that it’s the highlight of their week. Like this is the thing that makes the difference for them. And then, you know slowly but surely they come out of where they’ve been stuck and it really makes a world of difference for me to see that I can help them with that. "