“Acupuncture for schizophrenia
Antipsychotic drugs have been used to treat schizophrenia since the early 1950s. While effective for some, antipsychotics can still leave many of those treated with disabling adverse effects, and safer, more effective health care interventions are being researched to try and redress this problem.

“Acupuncture has been used in China to treat mental health disorders, including schizophrenia, for more than 2000 years. It has been proved that acupuncture has very few adverse effects. Also, it may be more socially acceptable, tolerable and inexpensive than the more conventional drugs manufactured by the pharmaceutical industry.

“This review identifies randomised controlled trials comparing acupuncture to antipsychotics and acupuncture combined with antipsychotics, to antipsychotics alone. The limited data we found provided mostly equivocal outcomes. Although some of the data did favour acupuncture when combined with antipsychotics, the results came from small studies, and further, more comprehensive trials are needed before we can confidently determine the efficacy of acupuncture in the treatment of schizophrenia.”