Acupuncture after Disasters

Oh! And this is a link to a film shown at the NADA conference, about acupuncture being given to people in an area of Chile, following a devastating earthquake.

the 2011 NADA conference

So, the 3rd weekend of May I attended the 22nd Annual NADA (National Acupuncture Detoxification Association) conference in Kansas City, MO. This year's conference theme was "NADA Communities of Recovery & Psychological First Aid" which theme its panels and other sessions explored over 2 days.

NADA is a non-profit organization which promotes training and advocacy for the 5-needle auricular acupuncture protocol and its uses. Originally developed for and seen in the field of substance abuse treatment, the NADA protocol has been widely used in treatment facilities all across the U.S., as well as internationally. Recently, the benefits of this deeply calming natured protocol have been recognized and used in other settings including mental health treatment sites and in disaster response (for example by Acupuncturists without Borders in New Orleans, Haiti and elsewhere) to forestall PTSD. Only
about 40% of the membership are acupuncture professionals, with the rest of the membership being psychiatrists, nurses, chemical dependency counselors, social workers, etc. Although it the NADA protocol is an acupuncture technique, employing acupuncture needles, it is also performed (actually largely performed in public-health settings) by non-acupuncture professionals, and most particularly by NADA-certified trainees. About 21 states permit these trainees to perform NADA (usually under supervision of licensed acupuncturists).

The conference keynote speaker was Robert Whitaker, investigative journalist and author of several books. He wrote Anatomy of An Epidemic about the history of mental illness in the "age pf psychopharmacology". I am currently reading this book, and plan to write up a book review later when I've finished (yes, I am just that geeky!). Some small tidbits from his talks:
* the "anti" (e.g. "antibiotic") disease model of mental illness began in 1955 with the introduction of Thorazine; from that point we have had a "profound leap forward" to psycharmaceutical drug spending of 40 billion dollars a year. (The mind more than boggles at such a figure -- it leaps free from its moorings & does a series of manic pirouettes!)
* Whitaker's central, simple query is: if these medications are so effective, shouldn't the mental illness disability rate drop? Or at least stabilize? One would think so, yes? Instead, the numbers indicate an ever-increasing rise in both mental illness diagnoses and the numbers of people who are determined to be so disabled by their diagnoses that they are classified as unable to be productive members of society. Surprisingly our disability rates are being swelled not by psychotic diagnoses, but by the "less severe", more transient affective disorders. Bipolar disease -- once a rare occurrence in the not-so-distant past -- is now appearing in society at the rate of 1 of every 50 adults.
* Although the biological basis for mental illness istill not definitively known (even the beloved serotonin "deficiency" theory doesn't hold water), it is still being "treated."
 

Other presentations at the conference included the use of a modified NADA protocol in a pilot program at Walter Reed military Hospital in Bethseda, which was targeted towards medical caretaker personnel; a rough draft of a documentary film by Brian Lindstrom which explored the implementation of the NADA protocol in psychiatric treatment centers in Eruope, and a report from “Acupuncturists Without Borders” Haiti Operations Manager, Julia Ranieri, about AWB operations in Haiti since the 2010 earthquake.

(Just after the conference ended, a deadly tornado hit Joplin in southern Missouri, and volunteer practitioners from both NADA and AWB mobilized to offer affected populations auricular acupuncture treatments.)

My personal relationship with NADA started as a student with my NADA training in 2000, which was a required part of my AOM education, and continued with my professional experience in a substance abuse treatment center. In my opinion, the existence of NADA & ADS'es benefit acupuncture physicians & our profession, both directly & indirectly. Directly with job creation (when professional acupuncturists supervise ADS'es) and as a source of referrals to “real” acupuncture for clients who have been introduced to the NADA treatments; and indirectly because the bulk of acupuncture treatments in the public health forum is occurring in NADA-centered clinics, and their existence helps to influence & expand the general public's view of the usefulness of our medicine. Additionally, the NADA organization has been compiling & organizing a treasure trove of outcomes-based research on acupuncture care for decades.

For more information on NADA, including specific details on upcoming trainings, I urge you to please contact NADA, via their website: www.acudetox.com.

Acupuncture May Ease Depression During Pregnancy

A recent study, to be published in the March 2010 issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology, explored treating women with depression during pregnancy with acupuncture. The small study (150 participants) found a 63 percent response rate to the depression-specific acupuncture treatment protocols, compared to a 44 percent response rate in women treated with control acupuncture or massage.

Up to 20 percent of women may experience depression during pregnancy. Depression in pregnant mothers is linked to premature delivery and post-partum depression. The safety of antidepressant drugs during pregnancy is not completely known, so it's important to have non-pharmaceutical treatment options.

For more details, please see the story @ Medline:

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_95574.html

--chris