Efectveness of auriculotherapy as a nursing interventon to improve wellness in alcohol-addicted young adults Mercedes Velasco Santana 1 , Leticia Casique Casique 2 , Teresita de Jesús Muñoz-Torres 3 , Alicia Aguirre Álvarez 4 Santana MV, Casique LC, Muñoz-Torres TJ, et al. Effectiveness of auriculotherapy as a nursing intervention to improve wellness in alcohol- addicted young adults. Health Pol. 2019;2(1):22-26. INTRODUCTION: In Mexico, addictions present major challenges for the new millennium, as the country faces one of endemic problems, more widespread and alarming in recent decades: the abuse of alcohol. OBJECTIVE: Check the effectiveness of auriculotherapy as a nursing intervention to improve general wellness in alcohol-addicted young adults. METHODOLOGY: Quantitative, correlational and applied study with pre- experimental, longitudinal; realized from January 2009 to August 2010 in a neighborhood of Tepic, Nayarit with n= 40. Research tools are the following:"Lecc.ves - A", "The Well -Being Picture Scale" (α=0.891), "Lesson- ves 1" (α=0.86) and "Lesson-ves 2" (α=0.80). A nursing care program based on auriculotherapy was designed and implemented, including group dynamics, educational and intervention sessions. The SPSS Statistics 17 was used, using relative and cumulative frequencies, mean and Standard Deviation (SD), and for hypothesis testing, the paired t-test (IC 95%; p<0.05). RESULTS: Data reported an increase of 14.4 points in the personal well- being, 6.57 of family well-being and 6.35 in social well-being, after the intervention with p=0.01. CONCLUSION: The nursing intervention using auriculotherapy was effective to stimulate the energy channels, allowing the flow and balance of energy, which influenced the increasing levels of general wellness. Key Words: Auriculotherapy; Nursing care program; Alcohol-addicted young adult INTRODUCTION Social changes derived from variations in dynamics and composition of population, which doubled in 1981 and is expected to do the same again in 2020, the multiple economic crisis and an accelerated social and cultural opening, influenced by modernization and globalization processes, have affected people's life in individual, familiar and social spheres. In all of them alcohol abuse and its consequences are present. This allows us to identify alcoholism as a common phenomenon in modern society [1]. Alcohol consumption has been signaled as an acute epidemiological trouble worldwide, as it represents 4% of the total death risk in the world. Regarding morbidity, the main diseases associated to alcohol abuse are the following: psychiatric disorders in 100% of the cases, hepatic cirrhosis in 32% of them and troubles related to violence, homicide and accidents in 9% of the cases. In a lower percentage, we have neoplastic of the mouth and breast cancer. In virtue of these figures, we can conclude that alcoholism is the most important factor affecting the loss of years of healthy life worldwide [2]. In Mexico, addictions represent big challenges for the new millennium; particularly, alcohol abuse is an endemic and alarming problem and a largely spread social phenomenon. Mexico is placed 10 th in an alcohol consumption ranking in Latin America with 71.3% of the total population (77,988,554 people) aged 12 to 65 years old. It is placed below other countries, such as Chili, Argentina, Venezuela or Brazil. Considering these figures, we can affirm that 63 in every 100 Mexican men aged 12 to 65 years old consume alcohol regularly. Regarding women, 41 in every 100 are regular alcohol consumers [3-6]. It is worthy to mention that the per capita consumption of ethanol was 7.2 L, consumers being aged 18 to 65 years old. The most consumed drinks among young people are the following: beer (41.1%), spirits (23.6%) and wine (6.6%) [4,7]. In the state of Nayarit, as well as in the rest of the country, alcohol is a risk factor associated to health damage, including accidents, violence and chronic liver disease. Adult population in the state of Nayarit represents 1.5% (1,108,799 people) of the total population of the country. A slight gender imbalance arises in the state population, as there are 49.9% of men and 50.1% of women. Alcohol consumption in the state is higher than the country average for both of them (44.0% of men and 22.4% of women); alcohol abusing or dependent men (17.2%) and women (3.0%) figures are also over the national average (23%). By the way, 15.4% of the total amount of adults in the state, 27.5% of men and 5.1% of women, declared having consumed an excessive quantity of alcohol within the last year. Last percentages place Nayarit at the top of the national alcohol consumption ranking, which reflects an intense habit among the population of the state [8,9]. Thus, people consuming alcohol experiment physical and psychological troubles, which have a negative effect on their wellness, owing to the fact that the disease is difficult to control. The brain cognitive structure, self- esteem and self-concept are affected, generating frustrations, depression, mood swings and aggressive behavior. Their attitudes reflect a low degree of satisfaction with life, with themselves and with their environment, derived from a lack of strength or capacity for facing up their problem and dealing with it [10]. Since alcoholism can take a serious toll on people's health, some research has been done to seek for therapeutic interventions, which would facilitate the overcoming treatment or could improve the patient's wellness. Up to our knowledge, none of this research is related to auriculotherapy. This study is based on Martha E. Rogers' Theory of Unitary Human Beings, in which the energy field is a fundamental unit and it provides a way to view people as irreducible wholes. A pattern is the distinguishing characteristic of an energy field and gives identity to it. The wellness experimented by the completely human being pattern is manifested when applying nonintrusive care techniques. Auriculotherapy is one of these techniques, using micro- stimulation of some specific points in the energy channels to increase the amplitude of high frequency resonant waves characterizing the whole human being pattern. This helps achieve the main nursing care goal, i. e., and the wellness for the individual, for families and for the community [11]. RESEARCH ARTICLE 1 College of Nursing, Autonomous University of Nayarit, México; 2 Department of Nursing and Obstetrics, Celaya-Salvatierra Campus, University of Guanajuato, México; 3 Multidisciplinary Middle Zone Academic Unity, Autonomous University of San Luis Potosí Home, México; 4 Department of Nursing Clinic, Celaya-Salvatierra Campus, University of Guanajuato, México Correspondence: Leticia Casique Casique, Department of Nursing and Obstetrics, Celaya-Salvatierra Campus, University of Guanajuato, México, Telephone: +52 461 6185922; e-mail: leticiacc_2004@yahoo.com.mx Received: March 20, 2019, Accepted: April 6, 2019, Published: April 18, 2019 This open-access article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (CC BY-NC) (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits reuse, distribution and reproduction of the article, provided that the original work is properly cited and the reuse is restricted to noncommercial purposes. For commercial reuse, contact reprints@pulsus.com Health Pol. Vol.2 No.1 2019 22