OCD obsessional thoughts

Comment by Chad J. Dupuis, L.Ac.

Psychiatric issues are a common reason for visits to a Chinese Medicine practitioner and both Chinese herbal medicine and acupuncture can be quite helpful. OCD is definitely seen often by most practitioners. Western medicine can be helpful as well, but as you are finding it is rarely a silver bullet and even when medications help there may be other side effects that make long term use difficult.

Many people who come in for treatment with this range of conditions are often fairly stabilized on western medicines but wanted to either come off because of side effects and/or because they want to truly deal with the underlying issues.

There are, however, no quick answers with this range of conditions so you should expect to work with a practitioner for at least 3 months and more than likely much longer than that. That doesn’t mean necessarily weekly treatments or anything, but you may be one herbal medicine for awhile. That said, I’ve treated many serious psychiatric complaints and it is just as likely to go very smooth and somewhat quick as it is to be a more complicated process.

The benefit of Chinese Medicine is that is has a near infinite number of ways to tailor treatment to an individual - these only limited by the skill and training of the practitioner. Long story short, what this means is that it is rare that you will not be helped by properly applied Chinese Medicine from a fully trained and licensed practitioner. Some of this is explained in “What Does Acupuncture Treat?”

I would recommend you find a practitioner in your area who practices both acupuncture and herbal medicine and begin treatment as soon as possible. It won’t matter if he is on western medications, the two systems work very differently and in some cases can even work well together.

Some studies that are related that might at least give you an idea of some of the potential are:

• Acupuncture Faster with Less Side Effects Than Prozac for Post Stroke Depression
• Study Finds Acupuncture Has an Anti-Depressant Effect Similar to Prozac
• Acupuncture Outperforms Prozac for Fibromyalgia
• Understanding How Shu Gan Wan Can Help Depression in Epilepsy Patients