Within the qigong community, there are specific treatments believed to be effective for addressing different forms of Zou huo ru mo. In particular, depending upon somatic versus psychological symptoms, and whether the condition is considered temporary or an intrinsic mental disorder, self-correction treatments can involve relaxation, walking, self-vibrating, self-patting, and self-massage; whereas clinical treatments can involve psychological counseling, expert guidance of practice, acupuncture, massage, "external qi" treatments, and symptomatic correction

Within the qigong community, Zou huo ru mo is believed to be caused by improper practice:

- Inexperienced or unqualified instructor

- Incorrect instructions

- Impatience

- Becoming frightened, irritated, confused, or suspicious during the course of qigong practice

- Inappropriate focus, interpreted as "inappropriate channeling of qi (life energy)i"

Beard, with his partner A.D. Rockwell, advocated first electrotherapy and then increasingly experimental treatments for people with neurasthenia, a position that was controversial. An 1868 review posited that Beard's and Rockwell's knowledge of the scientific method was suspect and did not believe their claims to be warranted.

William James was diagnosed with neurasthenia, and was quoted as saying, "I take it that no man is educated who has never dallied with the thought of suicide."

In 1895, Sigmund Freud reviewed electrotherapy and declared it a "pretense treatment." He emphasized the example of Elizabeth von R's note that "the stronger these were the more they seemed to push her own pains into the background."

Nevertheless, neurasthenia was a common diagnosis during World War I for "shell shock", but its use declined a decade later. Soldiers who deserted their post could be executed even if they had a medical excuse, but officers who had neurasthenia were not executed.

Neurasthenia is a term that was first used at least as early as 1829 to label a mechanical weakness of the "nerves" and would become a major diagnosis in North America during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries after neurologist George Miller Beard reintroduced the concept in 1869.

As a psychopathological term, the first to publish on neurasthenia was Michigan alienist E. H. Van Deusen of the Kalamazoo asylum in 1869, followed a few months later by New York neurologist George Beard, also in 1869 to denote a condition with symptoms of fatigue, anxiety, headache, heart palpitations, high blood pressure, neuralgia, and depressed mood. Van Deusen associated the condition with farm wives made sick by isolation and a lack of engaging activity, while Beard connected the condition to busy society women and overworked businessmen.

Neurasthenia is currently a diagnosis in the World Health Organization's International Classification of Diseases (and the Chinese Society of Psychiatry's Chinese Classification of Mental Disorders). However, it is no longer included as a diagnosis in the American Psychiatric Association's "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders".

Americans were said to be particularly prone to neurasthenia, which resulted in the nickname "Americanitis" (popularized by William James). Another, rarely used, term for neurasthenia is nervosism.

There exist some medications which can be useful specifically for treating sexual addiction.

Alternatively, doctors can prescribe general-purpose medications which have been found to be useful for a variety of behavioral addictions.

The term "pre-exposure prophylaxis" (PrEP) is generally used to refer to the use of [[antiviral drugs]] which can help in [[prevention of HIV/AIDS]]. PrEP is an optional treatment which may be taken by people who are HIV-negative, but who have substantial risk of getting an HIV infection.

In the US, most insurance plans cover these drugs.