Acupuncture, Chinese Herbal Medicine and Kanpo in York - Sylvia Schroer |
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Research Interests
I was the recipient of an NIHR (National Institute of Health Research) career development award and moved to York in 2003 to undertake PhD research at the University of York on acupuncture for depression. I am particularly interested, and have been working on, the challenge of designing clinical trials of acupuncture that have good 'model validity'. Model validity essentially means the intervention under investigation resembles clinical practice and takes into account the sort of outcomes that patients and practitioners expect and hope for.
I have raised concerns about the way my research has been taken forwards at York - with the NIHR and British Acupuncture Council. I am not involved with the ACUDEP trial, which I believe, on the basis of the piloting work I conducted for my PhD, to be scientifically and ethically questionnable. Brief courses of acupuncture treatment, with no follow up care, are not appropriate for severely sick patients who have been ill for decades and suffer with a number of other illnesses in addition to depression. This is, according to the piloting work, likely to be the profile of trial patients - who are also likely to be already using medication and have tried counselling. Furthermore, because acupuncture and counselling (the comparator arm for acupuncture) involve different therapeutic processes, the trial will be likely to favour acupuncture and exagerate the differences between the two types of treatment. In any case, NICE guidelines do not recommend brief counselling courses for patients with severe depression.
I encourage anyone who reads this email, (especially patients suffering with depression), who would prefer to see a trial that investigates more suitable durations of therapies to contact the NIHR, who are keen to involve patients in the research process and to hear their views about projects they have funded.
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