Acupuncture Has Been Found to Reduce the Severity of PTSD Symptoms
By Nancy Cullen. This article was initially published in the 3/7/24 edition of our Concussion Update newsletter; please consider subscribing.
A recent study has found that acupuncture has a statisticcally significant effect on reducing symptoms of PTSD. This finding is crucial, as PTSD is a relatively common and taxing psychiatric disorder that can cause intrusive thoughts and memories about a past traumatic event and intense negative feelings of anxiety, fear, or sadness. Acupuncture offers a different and potentially more accessible approach than current treatments, such as medication and psychotherapy (commonly prolonged exposure and cognitive processing therapy) that can be limited in effectiveness by nonadherence and high dropout rates from the treatment. Additionally, according to primary author Michael Hollifield in an article in MedPage Today, “While [PTSD is] thought of as a mental illness, it’s really not, in some sense. It’s an environmentally caused, whole-body illness that affects the brain and other parts of the body, and that’s why we believe acupuncture, as a somatic treatment, works, because trauma is stored deep in other body systems.”
In this randomized clinical trial, Hollifield et al. examined how acupuncture reduced symptom severity on the Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale-5 (CAPS-5) and the pre- versus post-treatment change in patients’ startle response over fifteen weeks. A total of 93 combat veterans (85 male, 8 female) with PTSD, aged 18-55, were randomly assigned to two groups. The groups participated in fifteen weeks of twice-weekly one-hour sessions, either true acupuncture or sham acupuncture (minimal needling). The study, published in JAMA Psychiatry, identified that acupuncture reduces both the severity of PTSD symptoms and biologically-based, fear-potentiated startle responses.
This finding is crucial because this is the first randomized clinical trial with a control of sham acupuncture that studied both clinical and biological outcomes of acupuncture for PTSD symptoms. As mentioned, acupuncture can be helpful for people who are not as comfortable with other PTSD treatments. However, it also can be valuable for people who have tried other PTSD treatments and been treatment-resistant. With this critical finding, researchers can start studying and comparing efficacy rates between traditional therapies and acupuncture.