Thread in GD about looking for PTSD treatment.

[woo me with science]

There are more recommendations for woo in that thread than any in recent memory. This is what people looking for trauma treatment are taught, and this is what your tax and insurance dollars are paying for.

I have been writing here for months that trauma therapy is infested with pseudoscientific garbage. This one thread shows it better than I could ever argue it. I cringe when people talk about insisting on PTSD care for veterans, because there is evidence that what is out there now makes people worse rather than better. I am all for veterans' care, but this whole field needs to be overhauled first to get the quacks out of business and insist on treatments that work.

[realisticphish]

1. yeah

for example, people still think that you should talk about it immediately afterwards, and "get it out." Whereas all the recent studies that i've read have indicated that in fact forgetting about it is the absolute best way to get over it psychologically.

[woo me with science]

2. You are the first person I have ever encountered who is aware of those studies.

They are very unpopular in the trauma industry, because they argue against the therapies that are most ingrained and lucrative. They have gotten close to zero coverage in the popular media. Instead, we have new rumors that Britney Spears has multiple personalities and a new series on Showtime promoting all these trauma myths.

The "get it out" idea is problematic all over the place.

These same therapists specialize in "rage releasing" therapies (e.g., beating on things, breaking things), even though research is very clear that doing these things only makes people angrier and more bitter.

There seems to be a general conceptualization of human beings as toxic storehouses. We all suffer from body memories or pent-up, toxic energy fields, and we need to pay good money to be purged of these things.
I won't even comment on the Kinoki foot pads and colon cleansing. :hurts:

.

[realisticphish]

3. freudian bullshit

catharsis and all that. I don't understand the whole "get it out" thing. I mean, if we FORGET bad shit, then hey, maybe it won't bother us as much. Seems common sense to me. When I go through something bad I don't want to relive it over and over.

I had some great professors in my undergrad psych program, so I've heard a LOT about the bullshit in the profession. And believe me, there's a hell of a lot of it.

[woo me with science]

4. I am ecstatic to hear that you were taught these things in undergrad.

I have heard many anecdotal stories just this year of the opposite: college classes still spewing the old myths about trauma. This stuff is highly political, and one problem is that reputable psychologists and psychiatrists shy away from going into trauma, because they know they will be surrounded by the cultists and the charlatans. In turn, the insurance companies want the cheapest therapists, so they hire the fly-by-night professional school therapists whose background in trauma is more likely to include reading Sybil for a master's presentation than any actual training in neuroscience, memory, or development.

To make it worse, recovered memory clients are self-selecting into the therapy profession, so they can legitimize their own therapy experiences and create new Believers. There have been several really disturbing surveys done over the past ten years documenting how many professionals in trauma therapy still believe in widespread satanic ritual abuse, and how many are recovering their own memories in therapy. The field is infested to the point that I would be very careful about referring anybody for therapy for an actual trauma, unless I knew damned well the background of the therapist they were going to see.

[realisticphish]

6. don't even get me started on recovered memory

:grr:

[Warpy]

5. The problem is that we don't have a lot of options

beyond drugging sufferers into insensibility while encouraging them to go to group therapy sessions, something that works very badly for most. I'm afraid the majority will self medicate with alcohol and drugs and barely cling to whatever life they have left, never fully participating in it.

Some things that look like woo actually work for a few lucky people, like the rapid eye movement therapies. Nobody knows why following a rapidly swinging pendant with the eyes while telling a traumatic story works but it does on some people.

Local curanderas treat what they call "susto," or persistent fear after a traumatic experience. Whether it's just the placebo effect or a reluctance on the part of the patient to admit s/he has been taken, quite a few of their customers report at least some relief from pure mumbo jumbo.

In any case, PTSD wrecks lives and most non sociopaths who survive war either as participants or collateral damage are destroyed by it. Temporary relief from a woo placebo effect might be the best we can do for many people. Preventing it by avoiding war at all costs is a much better idea.