Anecdotally, the answer is yes. But this has not been proved scientifically.
Ted Kaptchuk, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, acupuncturist and scholar of Asian medicine, put it this way: “As a practitioner, I would say that people who go to acupuncturists feel much less anxious and more calm, but that is experiential, not experimental.” As a researcher, Kaptchuk runs randomized, controlled trials of acupuncture and has concluded that at the very least, you have nothing to fear from acupuncture. “It’s worth trying because you’re unlikely to have any harmful effects,” he said.
The World Health Organization has reviewed acupuncture for a number of purposes and says (on its website in a report entitled “Acupuncture: Review and Analysis of Reports on Controlled Clinical Trials”) that “acupuncture is being increasingly used in psychiatric disorders.” It cites six studies, all of which were published in Chinese or acupuncture-specific journals.
The National Institutes of Health, through its National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, says acupuncture has shown “promising results” for certain problems, including the treatment of post-operative pain and chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting. It lists other conditions for which acupuncture may also be somewhat helpful (including addiction, stroke rehabilitation, headache, menstrual cramps, tennis elbow, fibromyalgia, low back pain and others), but does not include anxiety and depression on this list.
The NIH report also says that some research into the “plausible mechanisms” by which acupuncture works — including the release of natural painkillers in the body — is encouraging. Jennifer Evans, lead acupuncturist at Wellspace, Inc., a complementary health center in Cambridge, said her clinical experience has convinced her that acupuncture can help with anxiety and depression. “I have seen people
come in with those symptoms and I have seen them get relief. I have seen that for over a decade.”
Evelyn Fowler, president of the New England School of Acupuncture in Watertown, said that in her experience, acupuncture can be helpful for those suffering from anxiety and depresion. “It balances people’s energy so their emotions can be more balanced,” she said.