A structured Depression Recovery Program combining acupuncture, Chinese herbal medicine, and recovery coaching. Grounded in clinical research. 

If you have been carrying the weight of depression longer than you can remember, tried the options your doctor offered, and still feel like something essential is missing, you are in the right place. At AcuMedica we offer a focused, evidence-based program built specifically for women navigating depression and emotional dysregulation, designed to go deep enough and stay long enough to produce real, lasting change. 

The AcuMedica Depression Recovery Program brings three modalities together under one practitioner, in one sustained therapeutic relationship, over a complete course of care.

• Acupuncture: Regulates the nervous system, restores energetic balance, and activates the body's own healing response.

• Chinese Herbal Medicine: Individualized formulas extending the therapeutic effect between sessions, addressing the constitutional patterns underlying your depression at a deeper level.

• Recovery Coaching: Structured support between and beyond sessions, helping you build the habits, rhythms, and self-understanding that sustain healing when you walk out the door.

This is not a handful of sessions and a pamphlet. It is a full recovery process, the complete course of care that the research says actually works.

A 2023 meta-analysis of 2,391 participants documented a 72% response rate and 56% remission rate at 8 weeks of acupuncture treatment for depression. A Cochrane-level review of 29 studies confirmed that total treatment duration is the strongest predictor of lasting outcomes. The AcuMedica program is built around that evidence from the first session to the last.

This program is for women who are tired of feeling the way they feel and have not found something that actually changes it. Women who want a non-pharmacological path with clinical structure, personal attention, and measurable results. 

Women who wake up exhausted even after sleeping. Women who have lost interest in things they used to love. Women who describe themselves as fine to everyone around them and know that fine is nowhere near the truth. Women who have tried antidepressants and found the side effects unbearable, or the results incomplete. Women who have been to therapy and found it helpful but not enough. Women who have been told their labs are normal and left the doctor's office still carrying everything they walked in with.

This program is also for women navigating specific life transitions that carry a particularly heavy emotional weight: postpartum depression and the fog that can follow childbirth for months or years. Perimenopause and the hormonal shifts that affect mood, sleep, and identity in ways most women are not warned about. Burnout from years of giving without adequate recovery. Grief, including the kind that comes from losses that are not always recognized as losses: a relationship, a role, a version of yourself you thought you knew.

If depression is what you are living with, this program was built for you.

Most acupuncture practices offer 6 to 10 sessions for depression. That is not a criticism of those practices. It reflects how the field has historically operated. But the clinical research is clear: 6 to 10 sessions is not enough time for the nervous system to consolidate lasting change.

A 2023 meta-analysis of 2,391 participants published in Research in Nursing and Health documented a 72% response rate and 56% remission rate at 8 weeks of twice-weekly acupuncture treatment, compared to 18.2% and 4.5% in control groups (Chen et al., 2023). A Cochrane-level systematic review of 29 studies and 2,268 participants confirmed that total treatment duration is the strongest single predictor of lasting outcomes in acupuncture for depression, surpassing frequency alone (Smith et al., 2019). A RAND Corporation health technology assessment specifically identified the absence of long-term follow-up as the critical gap in the field.

The AcuMedica Depression Recovery Program is a direct answer to that gap. It does not stop at 8 weeks. It builds the full course of care that the research says produces durable results, and it adds two dimensions that no clinical trial has yet fully measured: clinical milestones using the PHQ-9 and heart rate variability, and structured recovery coaching, integrated into every phase.

24 individual sessions over 24 weeks, structured across five clinical phases and available in English and Spanish. Every session is private, in person, and built around your specific pattern and history. Here is exactly what you receive from enrollment through completion. 

Clinical Acupuncture Treatment 

Each session includes a full acupuncture treatment individually determined by your clinical pattern. No two protocols in this program are identical. The point selection, needling approach, and adjunct therapies used in your sessions are based on the assessment of your specific pattern of imbalance, not a standardized protocol applied to everyone with depression.

Sessions average 60-75 minutes. Your first appointment runs 90 minutes to allow for a comprehensive intake covering your full history, current symptoms, sleep, digestion, energy, emotional landscape, and anything else that informs your pattern.

Auricular acupuncture is integrated throughout the program. Small needles or ear seeds placed at specific points on the outer ear stimulate the auricular branch of the vagus nerve, supporting nervous system regulation between sessions and giving you a tool you can continue using at home.

Recovery Coaching  

Coaching is woven into the program from session one, deepening progressively across the five phases as your physiological capacity returns. 

You receive a structured coaching framework grounded in Project Management Professional methodology, adapted for clinical recovery. Across the program you build and keep the following documents:

Project Charter developed at your first session: your scope of recovery, your values, and your first behavioral activation assignments.

Milestone Tracking Record developed across Phases 2 and 3: weekly goals broken into daily actions, tracked like a project plan.

Resource and Stakeholder Map developed in Phase 3: a structured inventory of your internal strengths, relationships, and available support.

Risk Register developed in Phase 4: your personal relapse prevention plan, including warning signs, triggers, and a documented response strategy.

Vision Document developed in Phase 4: a concrete picture of the life you are building toward.

Closeout Package completed at your final session: a full record of your recovery arc, your tools, your plan, and everything you need to maintain what you built.

These are not worksheets. They are your documents. You keep them when the program ends.

Home Practice Instruction 

You leave each phase with specific practices to use between sessions. These are taught in session and reinforced progressively:

Resonance breathing: A slow diaphragmatic breathing protocol at approximately five to six breaths per minute, with documented effects on vagal tone, cortisol reduction, and mood. Guided audio practice is provided.

Acupressure: Specific point protocols you can apply at home, including Heart 7 for emotional settling, Liver 3 for stagnation and frustration, and Pericardium 6 for anxiety and chest tightness. Video demonstrations provided.

Auricular self-care: Ear seed placement at Shenmen and the sympathetic point for nervous system regulation between sessions.

Sleep and circadian health guidance: Practical recommendations grounded in both Chinese medicine organ clock theory and circadian neuroscience, addressing the sleep disruption that both drives and sustains depression.

Outcome Tracking

Your progress is measured at four clinical milestones across the program using two validated tools:

PHQ-9: The internationally validated nine-question scale for measuring depression severity. Administered at intake, end of Phase 2, end of Phase 3, and program completion. You see your scores at every checkpoint.

Heart Rate Variability: An objective marker of autonomic nervous system regulation measured at the same four milestones. Low HRV is consistently associated with depression. Acupuncture has documented effects on HRV improvement. This measurement shows nervous system healing independently of how you feel on any given day.

Both sets of data are yours. You leave the program with a documented before and after record of your own recovery.

What You Walk Away With

At program completion you have a complete closeout package including your full clinical outcome data across four milestones, every coaching document produced across the 24 weeks, your risk register and relapse prevention plan, your vision document, your home practice protocols, and a self-maintenance framework designed to sustain what the program built.

The program ends. The tools do not.

Phase 1: Immersion
Weeks 1 to 2 | Three sessions per week | 6 sessions 

This is where the shift begins. The first two weeks make full contact with the problem from the very first appointment. Three sessions per week creates a rapid physiological signal before the inertia of depression can reassert itself between visits. This is also where your complete clinical picture is taken in: your history, your pattern, your body's specific language for what it is carrying.

Coaching begins here too, but lightly. You leave your first session with a simple daily structure, one small, specific, achievable action per day. Not a wellness suggestion. A deliberate nervous system interrupt, the first step in rebuilding your capacity to act according to a plan rather than according to how you feel. Depression takes that capacity first. This phase begins restoring it.

Phase 2: Restoration
Weeks 3 to 6 | Twice per week | 8 sessions 

This is the heart of the clinical program. Eight sessions over four weeks at twice-weekly frequency. This is where the acupuncture does its deepest work: sleep begins to return, the somatic weight of depression starts lifting, mood stabilizes, and basic energy begins to rebuild.

The coaching deepens alongside the physiological shift. Weekly behavioral goals replace daily micro-tasks. Progress is tracked at the end of this phase with the PHQ-9 depression scale and heart rate variability measurement, giving you a concrete, visible marker of what has shifted in your nervous system. For many women this is the first time they have seen objective evidence that something is actually changing.

Phase 3: Consolidation
Weeks 7 to 11 | Once per week | 5 sessions 

Frequency drops to once weekly as your body begins holding its own regulation between sessions. This phase locks in what Restoration built and prevents the symptom rebound that abrupt discontinuation of treatment can trigger.

This is also the first phase where the coaching work goes deeper. With the physiological foundation stabilizing, you have more cognitive and emotional bandwidth for reflection. Questions begin here: who are you when you are not depressed? What did you value before the weight settled in? What would you do differently if you knew you were going to feel well again? These are not abstract exercises. They are the beginning of the identity work that the final phases build on.

Phase 4: Integration
Weeks 13, 15, and 17 | Every other week | 3 sessions 

The spacing between sessions is now intentional medicine. You are being asked to live your life between appointments rather than lean on them. The nervous system is learning to regulate itself in the context of real daily life, not just in the treatment room.

Sessions in this phase carry equal weight between acupuncture and coaching. The clinical work continues consolidating gains. The coaching work turns toward the future: a vision for the life you are rebuilding, a concrete risk plan for the warning signs that precede relapse, and a map of the relationships, resources, and practices that will sustain your recovery. You leave each session with something documented and yours.

Phase 5: Emergence | Florecimiento

Weeks 20 and 24 | Once each | 2 sessions

Two closing sessions that mark the formal completion of the program.

The first, at week 20, is a pre-closure review. PHQ-9 and heart rate variability are measured and compared against your intake data. You review the full arc together: where you started, what shifted, what you now know about yourself that you did not know before.

The second, at week 24, is intentional closure. You leave with every document produced across the program: your initial scope, your milestone record, your risk plan, your vision statement, and your self-maintenance framework. Not clinical records. Your own project documentation for the ongoing work of being yourself.

This session is also where the program formally ends and your life takes over.

From session one, structured coaching runs alongside the acupuncture rather than after it. The framework draws on Project Management Professional methodology, adapted for clinical use.

You are positioned as the project manager of your own recovery. The program gives you the structure: a defined scope at intake, trackable milestones across the phases, a risk register for relapse prevention, and a closeout package at completion. This matters because depression specifically destroys the capacity to generate structure on your own. The program holds that structure for you until your own capacity returns, and then transfers it back to you progressively.

The coaching is not therapy. It does not diagnose, analyze, or interpret. It organizes, clarifies, and moves forward.

Outcomes are measured at four clinical milestones across the program using two tools:

PHQ-9 (Patient Health Questionnaire): The internationally validated nine-question scale for measuring depression severity. Administered at intake, end of Phase 2, end of Phase 3, and program completion.

Heart Rate Variability: An objective marker of autonomic nervous system regulation. Low HRV is consistently associated with depression, anxiety, and chronic stress. Acupuncture has documented effects on HRV improvement. Measured alongside the PHQ-9 at each milestone, it gives you a physiological data point that shows nervous system healing independently of how you feel on any given day.

Both measurements are yours. You see them at every checkpoint. You leave the program with a documented record of your own recovery arc.

The first session begins with a full intake: your health history, your current experience of depression, your sleep, your digestion, your emotional patterns, the quality of your energy at different times of day. In Chinese medicine, all of these are clinically relevant. Depression is not a uniform diagnosis. It is a pattern, and every patient's pattern is somewhat different. The intake is how that pattern becomes visible.

From the intake, a treatment plan is established and the first acupuncture session begins. Needles are placed, you rest quietly for 25 to 35 minutes, and then needles are removed. Most patients describe the resting period as one of the most deeply relaxed states they have experienced. Some sleep. Many feel a shift in their nervous system that begins before they leave the room.

After the session, your coaching framework begins and if taking herbs, your herbal formula is prescribed. You leave with a clear picture of the five-phase plan, what each phase is designed to accomplish, and what you can expect to notice along the way.

The clinical evidence supporting this program spans randomized controlled trials, systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and network meta-analyses published in peer-reviewed journals including Frontiers in Neuroscience, JAMA Network Open, Neuropsychopharmacology, and the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews.

Key findings:

72% response rate and 56% remission rate at 8 weeks from a 2023 network meta-analysis of 22 randomized controlled trials involving 2,391 participants.

Longer courses produce greater outcomes. A Cochrane review of 29 studies confirms that total session count is the primary driver of depression outcomes, directly supporting the 24-week program design.

Fewer adverse effects than pharmacotherapy. Multiple meta-analyses confirm that acupuncture produces significant improvements in depression symptoms with fewer side effects than conventional antidepressant medication.

Practitioner experience matters. A 2021 systematic review identified practitioner qualification as a key determinant of treatment effectiveness, with experienced acupuncturists producing sustained results superior to antidepressants with no adverse effects.

How is this different from regular acupuncture? Most acupuncture practices treat a wide range of conditions and offer standalone sessions or short packages. AcuMedica is a focused program built specifically around depression and emotional health, with a structured three-phase protocol, integrated herbal medicine, recovery coaching, and outcome measurement built in from the start. It is a complete course of care, not a series of individual appointments.

Do I have to take herbal medicine? Herbal medicine is a core part of the program and significantly enhances outcomes by extending the therapeutic effect between sessions. If you have concerns about herbs, specific health conditions, or medications you are currently taking, we discuss all of that at your first visit before any formula is prescribed.

Can I continue seeing my psychiatrist or therapist while in the program? Absolutely, and in many cases it is encouraged. The AcuMedica program is designed to complement, not replace, the other care you are receiving. Many patients find that their other treatments become more effective once the nervous system begins to regulate through acupuncture.

What if I am currently taking antidepressants? The program is compatible with antidepressant medication. Any decisions about medication are made with your prescribing physician, never unilaterally. Some patients eventually work with their doctors to reduce medication as their symptoms improve. Others continue medication alongside the program. Both are entirely valid.

How do I know if I am improving? Progress is tracked using the PHQ-9, a validated 9-question depression severity measure administered at intake, week 4, week 8, and program completion. You will have a clear, objective record of where you started and where you are at each checkpoint. The numbers tell the story alongside your own experience of how you feel.

How do I get started? Call or text 305.912.7251 for a free phone consultation. We will talk about where you are, what you have tried, and whether this program is the right fit for you. There is no obligation and no pressure. The conversation is the beginning.

All care at AcuMedica is provided in full compliance with HIPAA. Your health information is private and is never shared without your explicit consent. If at any point during the program you experience thoughts of self-harm or a mental health crisis, you will be referred immediately to the appropriate emergency or psychiatric resources. The AcuMedica program is a powerful support for depression recovery and is not a substitute for emergency psychiatric care. 

• Call or text: 305.912.7251 

• Email: jamileth@acu-medica.com

• Location: 8900 SW 107th Avenue, Suite 301, Miami FL 33176

• The first conversation is free. The program begins when you are ready.