Six-month effects of integrative treatment, therapeutic acupuncture and conventional treatment in alleviating psychological distress in primary care patients - follow up from an open, pragmatic randomized controlled trial

Abstract

BackgroundTo evaluate and compare 6-month effects of 8 weeks of an integrative treatment (IT), therapeutic acupuncture (TA), and conventional treatment (CT) in reducing symptoms of anxiety, depression and in improving health-related quality of life (HRQL) and sense of coherence (SOC) in psychologically distressed primary care patients.MethodsPatients who had participated in an open, pragmatic randomized controlled trial were followed up six months after treatment. The study sample consisted of 120 adults (40 per treatment arm) aged 20 to 55 years referred from four different primary health care centres in western Sweden for psychological distress. Assessments were made at baseline after eight weeks and after 24 weeks. Anxiety and depression were evaluated with the Hospital Anxiety and Depression scale (HADS), HRQL with the SF-36 Mental Component Summary scores (MCS) and SOC with the Sense of Coherence-13 questionnaire.ResultsNo baseline differences were found between groups on any outcome variable. At 24 weeks, IT and TA had significantly better values than CT on all variables. All three groups showed significant improvements from baseline on all variables, except HAD depression in CT; however, improvements were significantly greater in IT and TA than in CT. IT and TA did not differ on any outcome variable. Effect sizes were large in IT and TA for all variables and small or moderate in CT. Improvements on all variables seen after 8-weeks of IT and TA remained stable at 24 weeks and the CT group improved on HAD anxiety.ConclusionsIT and TA seem to be more beneficial than CT in reducing anxiety, depression, and in improving quality of life and sense of coherence after 24 weeks of follow up in patients with psychological distress. More research is needed to confirm these results.Trial registrationISRCTN trial number NCT01631500.

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“…The interventions were predominantly administered in one of two ways: visits were scheduled on a regular basis (ie weekly, twice a week, five times a week or six times a week) or the number of visits were capped over the course of the study (ie up to seven sessions over 10 weeks, up to eight visits over 52 weeks and up to 12 hours of 1:1 consultation time over 16 weeks). Eisenberg et al used a combination of these two approaches, offering participants up to two treatment sessions per week.…”

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“…In a 6-month follow-up analysis of 102 remaining patients, all HAD-D and HAD-A improvements seen after 8-weeks of IT and TA remained stable, and the CT group improved on HAD-A only. 23 In this pragmatic trial, acupuncture resulted in clinically important reductions in anxiety and depression when compared to standard treatment alone in a primary care setting. In addition to acupuncture, patients continued to take their previously prescribed medications, but did not engage in any new therapies.…”