Alternative therapies in health and medicine
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Altern Ther Health Med · Nov 2007
Randomized Controlled Trial Controlled Clinical TrialMindful awareness in body-oriented therapy for female veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder taking prescription analgesics for chronic pain: a feasibility study.
Preliminary studies of body therapy for women in trauma recovery suggest positive results but are not specific to women with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and chronic pain. ⋯ Over 10 weeks of recruitment, 31 women expressed interest in study participation. The primary reason for exclusion was the lack of prescription analgesic use for chronic pain. Study participants adhered to study procedures, and 100% attended at least 7 of 8 sessions; all completed in-person post-treatment assessment. Written questionnaires about intervention experience suggest increased tools for pain relief/relaxation, increased body/mind connection, and increased trust/safety. Ten of 14 responded to mailed 3-month follow-up. The response-to-process measures indicated the feasibility of implementing the manualized protocol and point to the need for longer sessions and a longer intervention period with this population.
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Altern Ther Health Med · Nov 2007
ReviewIntegrative mental health care: from theory to practice, part 1.
Integrative approaches will lead to more accurate and different understandings of mental illness. Beneficial responses to complementary and alternative therapies provide important clues about the phenomenal nature of the human body in space-time and disparate biological, informational, and energetic factors associated with normal and abnormal psychological functioning. The conceptual framework of contemporary Western psychiatry includes multiple theoretical viewpoints, and there is no single best explanatory model of mental illness. ⋯ In part 2, a practical methodology for planning integrative assessment and treatment strategies in mental health care is proposed. Using this methodology the integrative management of moderate and severe psychiatric symptoms is reviewed in detail. As the conceptual framework of Western medicine evolves toward an increasingly integrative perspective, novel understandings of complex relationships between biological, informational, and energetic processes associated with normal psychological functioning and mental illness will lead to more effective integrative assessment and treatment strategies addressing the causes or meanings of symptoms at multiple hierarchic levels of body-brain-mind.