With the war in Ukraine going on, just reading about it might cause people to feel like they have PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). Of course, then there are all the people who are really suffering from PTSD from something traumatic that happened in their life.
If you are suffering from PTSD, what can you do about it. Well, you could try drugs like Prozac or talk therapy or something that’s call EMDR, which means Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. I want to focus on EMDR.
What you are doing with EMDR is moving your eyes side-to-side while you are thinking about a negative stressful situation related to your trauma.
Doing these eye movements seems to discharge the negative energy that a person has attached to the thoughts.
In a study comparing EMDR with Prozac, the researchers found that the group on Prozac did slightly better than a control group that received a sugar pill. With the placebo group about 30 to 42 percent showed improvement. The Prozac group had 35 to 57 percent showing improvement.
With EMDR, the patients didn’t just improve. The researchers found eight months after the EMDR treatments stopped that 60% of the patients were completely cured while only 1 in 10 of the Prozac patients were completely cured!
As a side note, the patient’s taking Prozac could only maintained their improvement by continuing to take Prozac.
The researchers also found that EMDR worked best on traumatic events that occurred when the patient was an adult. Both EMDR and Prozac were quite a bit less effective for childhood trauma.
For people who are experiencing military related PTSD, the researchers found that 12 EMDR sessions were needed to help the patient heal.
EMDR has become an approved treatment by the Department of Veterans Affairs. To find a therapist, you can go to www.EMDR.com.
(Reported The Body Keeps Score: Brain, Mind and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk)
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