Experience with non-drug therapies (psychotherapy, phytotherapy, reflexotherapy) for neurasthenia

Abstract

Objective : to study the efficiency of treating neurasthenia by psychotherapy in combination with reflexotherapy (acupuncture) and phytotherapy. Patients and methods. Psychotherapy or combination treatment (psychotherapy + reflexotherapy, psychotherapy + phytotherapy) was performed in 96 neurasthenic patients (65 men and 31 women) aged 18 to 40 years. Therapeutic effectiveness was evaluated by psychometric testing using the Clinical Global Impression Scale (CGI), the Spielberger-Hanin test, and the multidimensional fatigue inventory (MFI-20). Results . All the patients underwent a complete treatment cycle for 35 days. After the therapy, all the patients showed a stable reduction in emotional lability and a decrease in the magnitude of somatic complaints. Analysis of CGI data revealed the good therapeutic effect of a combination of non-drug treatments: at the initial stage of therapy, it was rated as improvement; by the end of the third week, a noticeable improvement was recorded in half of all the patients. According to the clinical assessment, practical recovery and considerable improvement were noted in 60.8% of the patients in Group 1, in 69.7% in Group 2, in 37% in Group 3, or in 57.3 of all the patients. The MFI-20 scores for all sections improved significantly. The mean Spielberger-Hanin scores for personal and reactive anxiety decreased from 34.5 to 29.5 and from 35.5 to 32.1, respectively. Conclusion . The combination treatment of neurasthenia was established to be highly effective. A combination of psychotherapy and phytotherapy was more effective for comorbidity of asthenic symptomatology with anxiety and depressive manifestations, so was that of reflexotherapy and psychotherapy for somatoautonomic disorders and an anxious component. Psychotherapy as monotherapy proved to be less efficient.