The Relationship Between Acupuncture Treatment and Anxiety

Subject: Our current century has seen an ever-burgeoning increase in anxiety in al1 populations. Many forms of therapy have been employed to alleviate the same. An escalating interest in complementary, mind/body, alternative modalities has generated a greater pursuit of acupuncture in the United States. However, there continues to be a shortage of literature exploring the relationship between the alleviation at anxiety and the use of acupuncture. In this study, the S-Anxiety sca1e (STAI Form Y-l) of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) will be administered to eighty-nine patients, both before and immediately following one acupuncture treatment. The S-Anxiety scale is comprised of twenty statements assassin the subject's current, "in the moment", feeling. Specifically, apprehension, tension, nervousness and worry are evaluated. The S-Anxiety scale is particularly sensitive to changes in transitory anxiety. A statistical analysis will be performed to determine if there exists any significant differences in participants anxiety levels vis-a-vis before and after acupuncture treatment.

Objective: All eighty-nine samples are from acupuncture patients of Magnolia Health Center. Each sample came to center for acupuncture treatment with different illness.

Method: Cases in the study were patients who came to the center for acupuncture treatments during the period of April, May and June of 1997, no restrict for the randomizing. Every case was notified of the study purpose and completed a portion of a questionnaire before and immediately following acupuncture. The acupuncture treatment was determined according to case condition or illness, no one had added any more acupoint for the purpose of study. Immediately following treatment, each person completed the second part of the same questionnaire. All of the data was collected and analyzed by a professional statistician.

Results: For eighty-nine samples, all information was processed and analyzed by a statistician using standard statistical tools. The details and results will be discussed during the conference.

By Magnolia Goh, Terry Bordaa