Awareness and Emotional Aspects of Cupping Therapy in Young Adults

Introduction: A percentage of patients are afraid of cupping therapy because it leaves marks and often don’t take cupping therapy because of the fear and pain. Patients often have a negative emotional reaction to circular red marks that appear on the treatment area. Determining the arousal state of patients based on their responses to emotional stimuli is crucial to comprehend the effect of cupping therapy. Patients are still apprehensive about receiving cupping therapy and are concerned about the unsightly markings it leaves. Patient’s perceptions can have a significant impact on treatment. It is therefore vital to assess the arousal level of patients in order to comprehend its intrinsic activity. With control images of visual stimuli depicting fear, disgust, happiness, neutral emotion, and cupping therapy, participants provided arousal ratings based on their responses to emotional stimuli.

Methods: We assessed 100 participants in age group between 18-26 years old. We asked the participants to fill fear of pain questionnaire before showing images of basic emotions and post cupping therapy marks and visual analogue scale to be filled after the images shown as a comparative study to evaluate their pain assessment

Results: According to visual analogue scale, negative pain emotions were seen in 54% of the participants and awareness was spread in 21% of the participants.

Conclusion: Hence the study concluded that there was emotional negative reaction to which cupping therapy was not taken because of the fear.