Shiatsu Adjuvant Therapy for Hospitalized Psychiatric Patients: an Open Pilot Study

SHIATSU ADJUVANT THERAPY FOR SCHIZOPHRENIA Protocol for an Open Pilot Study

1. Background Schizophrenia is a severe, chronic mental illness that affects approximately 1% of the population worldwide. While the pharmacological treatments available have advanced considerably in the last fifty years, there are limits to what they offer some patients, especially in terms of improving dysphoria, sleep, mood, avolition, social functioning, and anhedonia, which contribute greatly to the everyday misery of these patients.

Furthermore, some of the antipsychotic drugs induce side effects of parkinsonism, akathisias, orofacial dyskinesias, dystonias, and their associated muscle pain, and stiffness. The treatments used for those side effects are anticholinergic drugs (e.g. trihexyphenidyl), benzodiazepines, and beta blockers. The number and variety of such drugs suggests what clinicians know to be unfortunately true: there are no magic bullets for these symptoms. These drugs are also not innocent, causing side effects of their own, contributing to polypharmacy, and carrying a financial cost.

Schizophrenia, then, remains a debilitating illness whose treatment results are often partial and may produce unpleasant side-effects. New approaches to supplement standard modalities ought to be considered.

Shiatsu, or acupressure, is a holistic form of medicine originating in Japan but now widely practiced throughout the world. Shiatsu involves applying pressure to "meridians" of the body, much like acupuncture but without the needles. The shiatsu therapist views the whole body as interconnected - stiffness in one part may reflect a problem in another, or emotional disharmony. In accordance with the WHO definition of health as "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity," shiatsu massage aims to improve the overall well-being of its recipients by manipulating the body.