Mental Health

Mental health disorders are medical conditions that disrupt a person’s thinking, feeling, mood, ability to relate to others, and daily functioning, resulting in a diminished capacity for coping with the ordinary demands of life. While all of us occasionally deal with major upheavals or emotional distress at some point of life, in some cases these events can trigger a host of unexpected feelings and behaviors, from depression and panic attacks, to disruptions to sleep patterns and eating habits.

Acupuncture has long been used to treat conditions ranging from depression, anxiety, mood swings, and insomnia to bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Though these conditions are usually seen as spiritual in nature, from the Oriental medicine holistic perspective of seeing the body, mind, and spirit as one, mental health is inseparable from the physical. Your state of mind affects your body, and vice versa.

Both the physical and emotional symptoms that you experience are viewed in Chinese medicine as a reflection of energetic changes and imbalances, allowing an experienced practitioner to formulate a precise diagnosis and create a treatment plan designed to alleviate symptoms by bringing the person back into balance. As balance is restored, both the physical and the emotional aspects of health are improved.

This holistic approach makes acupuncture and Chinese herbal therapy uniquely suited to helping patients with mental health concerns, since they not only alleviate symptoms associated with mental health issues, but address the root cause of the problem by helping to rebalance the body’s internal environment. Though psychological counseling is not a part of Chinese medical treatment, relevant lifestyle changes and relaxation techniques are often recommended as a part of treatment.