CASE REPORT article
Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Anxiety and Stress Disorders
Case Report: Psychological Acupuncture for Severe Cynophobia with Comorbid PTSD
Provisionally accepted
- 1Beijing Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China
- 2Traditional Chinese Medicine, First Affiliated Hospital of Jiaxing University, Zhejiang, China
- 3Beijing Zhongren International Institute of Psychological Medicine, Beijing, China
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Objective: Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) with comorbid specific phobia represents a challenging clinical condition, particularly when patients decline pharmacological or trauma-focused psychotherapeutic interventions due to fear of re-traumatization or intolerance to adverse effects. This report describes a unique case of severe cynophobia with comorbid PTSD successfully treated using psychological acupuncture, an integrative intervention combining guided trauma recall with fingertip acupoint tapping. Methods: A 63-year-old woman developed intense fear of dogs, intrusive nightmares, avoidance of outdoor activities, hypervigilance, and severe insomnia following a dog attack. The patient met DSM-5 diagnostic criteria for PTSD and specific phobia (cynophobia) and refused standard psychiatric treatments. Psychological acupuncture was administered in two 40-minute sessions over a two-week interval, incorporating relaxation training, guided trauma recall, and rhythmic fingertip tapping (4-5 Hz) on selected acupoints associated with emotional regulation. Clinical outcomes were assessed using the Subjective Units of Distress scale (SUDs), Insomnia Severity Index (ISI), and PTSD Checklist for DSM-5 (PCL-5). Results: Marked clinical improvement was observed following the intervention. The patient's SUDs score decreased from 10 to 3, ISI score from 23 to 7, and PCL-5 score from 54 to 20. Improvements in fear reactivity, sleep quality, and avoidance behavior occurred rapidly after treatment and were maintained at the 3-month follow-up. No adverse events were reported. Conclusion: This case suggests that psychological acupuncture may serve as a rapid, safe, and well-tolerated integrative therapeutic option for patients with trauma-related specific phobia and comorbid PTSD who decline conventional treatments. The findings highlight the potential role of combined cognitive-emotional activation and somatic modulation in alleviating trauma-related symptoms and support further investigation of this approach in controlled clinical studies.
Keywords: case report, Integrative Medicine, mind-body therapy, Post-traumatic stress disorder, Psychological acupuncture, specific phobia
Received: 26 Nov 2025; Accepted: 16 Feb 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Wang, Dan, Wang, Zhang and Zhang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Guangzhong Zhang
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