A blurry, multicoloured background with "Acupuncture can help teens with anxiety" printed over it.

Acupuncture can help teens with anxiety

ByLisa Baird

While it’s true that most teens take a minute to warm up to the idea of acupuncture, those who do try it tend to get great results, fast. (I’m not sure why — one of my teachers at acupuncture school said that children and youth “have lots of yang energy, so their bodies can change really fast.”) In my 11 years experience of practicing in a community setting, I’ve observed that children and teens tend to get quicker symptom relief than adults, with fewer and shorter treatments (i.e. 20 minutes instead of the usual minimum of 30-45 minutes) and with less needles. 

Lately I’ve seen a few teens enjoy total relief from panic attacks, alongside much lower daily anxiety levels, after a short course of biweekly treatments. As we slowly emerge from the pandemic and have real conversations about the impacts on our mental health, my hope is that affordable acupuncture becomes a more widely used tool for attending to anxiety—especially for youth who are open to it. Btw it still works even if they spend their treatments looking at their phones!

(I sure wish there had been a community acupuncture clinic in my hometown when I was a teen.)

If you have questions about how community acupuncture can help you or someone you care about with anxiety, please get in touch.

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