A Brief Body Mind Spirit Group Therapy for Chinese Medicine Stagnation Syndrome: A Randomized Controlled Trial
Background Stagnation syndrome, a diagnostic entity in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is characterized by mind body obstruction like symptoms. Although TCM has long established symptom relief treatments, a comprehensive mind body intervention was called for. Purpose The study evaluated the efficacy of a six session body mind spirit (BMS) group therapy for persons with stagnation syndrome. Method A 2 arm randomized controlled trial design was adopted. The control group received a parallel general TCM instruction course. Both groups completed a pretest (T0) posttest (T1) and 2 month follow up assessment (T2) The measures included self report scales on stagnation, depression, anxiety, physical distress, daily functioning, and positive and negative affect; the other measure was of salivary cortisol, a biological marker of stress. Results Data on 111 adults with stagnation syndrome were included in the analysis. Completion rates were high (over 87% for both the intervention and control groups. Repeated measures multivariate MANOVA revealed a significant combined effect with large effect size (eta squared 0.42) Repeated measures ANOVA further revealed that the intervention group showed significant improvements in stagnation, the primary outcome, with medium effect size (eta squared 0.11) The intervention group also showed significant improvements in depression, physical distress, everyday functioning, and negative affect (eta squared 0.06 to 0.13) Post hoc analysis revealed that the intervention group showed significant improvements over the control group in cortisol level at 2 month follow up assessment (T0 versus T2) with small effect size (eta squared 0.05) but not at posttest (T0 versus T1) Conclusions Overall, the findings indicate that our brief BMS group therapy intervention for stagnation syndrome is efficacious. Moreover, the intervention resulted in a number of substantial improvements in the physical and mental health domains.
Evidence based complementary and alternative medicine eCAM