With the advancement and complexity on present society it has been called the “age of depression”. One gets the feeling that depression, following a singular path of increase in recent years is one sort of “sickness of the era”. This time we conducted a screening test for masked depression, selected those showing such a tendency, and here report the remarkable improvement in a short period of time the condition of depression using acupuncture.
Method: Nakajima's test for masked depression (abbr MD test) was carried out on students from Meiji special school of Oriental Medicine and Meiji Junior College of Acupuncture and Moxibustion and screened 65 subjects with depression tendencies. Twenty-seven of these 65 subjects were randomly selected and divided into two groups of 16 in “actual group” and 11 in “placebo group”. Acupuncture method: In the actual group six acupoints that commonly applied on the psychic disease were used as follows; HYAKUE (GV 20), SHINCHU (GV 12), SHIN-YU (BL 15), KOKETSU (CV 14), SHINMON (HT 7) and SAN-INKO (SP 6) and the other hand in the placebo group five acupoints close to these in the former group but which are not directly related to psychic disease were applied as follows; TOH-DO (GV 13), FU-MON (BL 12), SUIBUN (CV 9), GEREN (LI 8) and KENSYO (GB 39). Acupuncture was performed for 10 minutes stationally by using gold needle (0.20mm wide, 40mm length) and was undertaken three times in a week for four weeks. Its clinical effect was evaluated by the MD test and the CMI test every two weeks.
Results: 1) In the actual group the score on the MD test averaged out to a return to normal range within two weeks whereas in the placebo group even after four weeks the score still remained in the sphere of depression.
2) In the actual group a 80% of the subjects showed in area IV (the sphere of neurosis) on the CMI test was resistant to the therapy. Even they did not relieve into the sphere of normality.
3) The acupuncture therapy indicated a tendency to the improvement of both physical and psychic symptoms in the actual group.
Conclusion: It was demonstrated that the acupuncture therapy applying acupoints suitable for psychic disease brought rappydly improvement of not only psychic symptoms but also physical symptoms and then gave a relief from the condition of depression.