Rapid Eye Movement PTSD Treatment

12 Sunday Oct 2014

Posted by Hunt 4 Truth in Book, Book review, Consciousness, Culture, Happiness, Health, Inspiration, Lessons, Meditation, Mindful, Spirituality

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American Psychiatric Association, EMDR, EMDR Institute, Energy, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, Francine Shapiro, Journey of self-discovery, meditate, Peace, peaceful serenity, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, serenity, spirit, spiritual progress

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EDMR)

The Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense issued clinical practice guidelines that recommend EDMR for the treatment of PTSD. Perhaps, the rapid eye movement allows the patient less opportunity to consciously react to the distress that they are reviewing. The brain’s information processing system naturally moves toward mental health. Positive controlled outcome studies demonstrate that >80% of single-trauma victims no longer have post-traumatic stress after only three 90-minute sessions. Reportedly, Kaiser Permanente, found that 100% of the single-trauma victims and 77% of multiple trauma victims no longer suffer with PTSD after only six 50-minute sessions. EMDR Institute, Inc. reported that 77% of combat veterans were free of PTSD in 12 sessions.

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EDMR) 20/20 Report

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Francine Shapiro is the originator and developer of EMDR.

In 1987, she made the chance observation that moving her eyes from side to side appeared to reduce the disturbance of negative thoughts and memories. This experience led her to examine this phenomenon more systematically. Working with approximately 70 volunteers, she developed standardized procedures to maximize therapeutic outcomes, conducted additional research and a published randomized controlled study with trauma victims. After further research and elaboration of the methodology, she published a textbook in 1995 detailing the eight phases of this form of psychotherapy. EMDR is now recommended as an effective treatment for trauma in numerous international practice guidelines, including those of the American Psychiatric Association and the Department of Defense.

Dr. Shapiro is a Senior Research Fellow Emeritus at the Mental Research Institute in Palo Alto, California, Executive Director of the EMDR Institute in Watsonville, CA, and founder and President Emeritus of the EMDR Humanitarian Assistance Programs, a non-profit organization that coordinates disaster response and low fee training worldwide. see also: https://www.emdr.com/

Thanks for visiting.

Eric

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Mindful news… combat-related PTSD breakthrough

08 Tuesday Apr 2014

Posted by Hunt 4 Truth in Culture, Health, Meditation, Mindful, News update

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abuse victim, cognitive therapy, mindful therapy, Mindfulness therapy, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, trauma, University of Michigan Health System, veterans with PTSD

Mindfulness therapy might help veterans with combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder

Source: Science Daily

Summary: Veterans with PTSD who completed a mindfulness-based group treatment plan showed a significant reduction in symptoms as compared to patients who underwent treatment as normal.

A collaborative study from the University of Michigan Health System and the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System shows that veterans with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) who completed an 8-week mindfulness-based group treatment plan showed a significant reduction in symptoms as compared to patients who underwent treatment as normal.

Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, or MBCT, combines the practice of cognitive therapy with the meditative approach of mindfulness that stresses an increased awareness of all thoughts and emotions.

Previous research has shown stress reduction classes that use mindfulness meditation have been beneficial to people with a history of trauma exposure — including veterans, civilians with war-related trauma and adults with a history of childhood sexual abuse — but the new study is the first to examine the effect of mindfulness-based psychotherapy for PTSD with veterans in a PTSD clinic.

“The results of our trial are encouraging for veterans trying to find help for PTSD,” says Anthony P. King, Ph.D., the study’s lead author and research assistant professor in the U-M Department of Psychiatry, who performed the study in collaboration with psychologists at the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System. “Mindfulness techniques seemed to lead to a reduction in symptoms and might be a potentially effective novel therapeutic approach to PTSD and trauma-related conditions.”

Veterans in the mindfulness treatment groups participated in in-class exercises such as mindful eating, in which they focus on sensations associated with eating very slowly; “body scanning,” an exercise where patients focus on physical sensations in individual parts of the body, paying special attention to pain and tension; mindful movement and stretching; and “mindfulness meditation” including focusing on the breath and emotions. The participants were also instructed to practice mindfulness at home through audio-recorded exercises and during the day while doing activities such as walking, eating and showering.

After eight weeks of treatment, 73 percent of patients in the mindfulness group displayed meaningful improvement compared to 33 percent in the treatment-as-usual groups.

King says the most noticeable area of improvement for patients in the mindfulness group was a reduction in avoidance symptoms. One of the main tenets of mindfulness therapy is a sustained focus on thoughts and memories, even ones that might be unpleasant.

“Part of the psychological process of PTSD often includes avoidance and suppression of painful emotions and memories, which allows symptoms of the disorder to continue,” King says. “Through the mindfulness intervention, however, we found that many of our patients were able to stop this pattern of avoidance and see an improvement in their symptoms.”

Mindfulness techniques also emphasize focus and attention to positive experiences and nonjudgmental acceptance to one’s thoughts and emotions. Because of this, the researchers found that the patients in the mindfulness group experienced a decrease in feelings of self-blame and a trend toward decreased perception of the world as a dangerous place.

King says the results of this pilot study are encouraging, but further studies with a larger sample size are needed to fully explore the breadth of mindfulness intervention benefits. He added that the U-M-VA group is currently conducting a larger study including military veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Further studies will help us understand whether mindfulness training is more aptly considered an adjunct option to gold-standard trauma-focused treatments such as prolonged exposure or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), or whether it can function as an intervention in its own right for treating avoidance and other symptoms,” he says.

“Either way, mindfulness-based therapies provide a strategy that encourages active engagement for participants, are easy to learn and appear to have significant benefits for veterans with PTSD.”

Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by University of Michigan Health System. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Journal Reference:

Anthony P. King, Thane M. Erickson, Nicholas D. Giardino, Todd Favorite, Sheila A.M. Rauch, Elizabeth Robinson, Madhur Kulkarni, Israel Liberzon. A Pilot Study of Group Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) for Combat Veterans with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Depression and Anxiety, 2013; DOI:10.1002/da.22104

University of Michigan Health System. “Mindfulness therapy might help veterans with combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder.” ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 17 April 2013. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/04/130417130007.htm>.