Posttraumatic stress disorder – TFT Trauma Relief

TFT Study in “African Journal of Traumatic Stress”

The TFT Foundation is very pleased to announce that its study on the effects of TFT on PTSD, led by TFT Foundation Trauma Relief Committee chairperson Suzanne Connolly and conducted in Rwanda in 2009, was recently published by the “African Journal of Traumatic Stress.” The study abstract is below. For the complete study, please click here.

Abstract

The use of Thought Field Therapy (TFT), a brief therapy technique, is examined in a study titled, Utilizing Community Resources to Treat PTSD: A Random Controlled Study Using Thought Field Therapy, to determine if there is a significant difference in the reduction of trauma symptoms between the treated group and the untreated group post treatment.

Study participants in the waitlist group received treatment after having completing the posttest. One-hundred and sixty four adult survivors of the 1994 Rwandan genocide received a one-time trauma-focused TFT intervention in this randomized waitlist controlled study. Prior to the study,TFT techniques were taught to community leaders, who then provided them in their native language, Kinyarwanda, to the participants during an individual session. Pre- and post-intervention surveys of trauma symptoms included the Trauma Symptom Inventory (TSI)

(Briere, 1995) and the Modified Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Symptom Scale (MPSS) (Falsetti, Resnick, Resnick, & Kilpatrick, 1993). After one week, significant differences were found in trauma symptoms and level of PTSD symptom severity and frequency between the treatment and the waitlist control groups. Participants in the waitlist group experienced significant reductions in trauma symptoms following their treatments,which took place after the first posttest. These positive outcomes suggest that a one-time, community leader facilitated trauma-focused intervention may be beneficial with protracted PTSD in genocide survivors.

Healing Birth Trauma with TFT

by Pia Cowley, RN, RM, TFT-Adv & Lianne Schwartz, RM, TFT-Adv

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this…”

Current research in the US and Australia has found that around 1:3 women experience at least one symptom of trauma following birth, with around 1.5-6% developing full blown post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Con- sidering the numbers of women giving birth every day, the potential for trauma is vast.

Birth trauma, in this context, refers to symptoms of PTSD rather than physical trauma to woman or infant from the process of birth (though these may play their own part in the traumatic experience). Birth trauma is frequently misdiagnosed, and mistreated, as postnatal depression.

Birth trauma has countless ongoing negative effects: disruption to the parent-infant bond, reduced rates of breast- feeding (and the long term health implications of this), depression in partners, higher rates of divorce, higher rates of subsequent infertility in woman, and reduced emotional adjustment and cognitive/neurological development in children. One woman describes her journey after birth:

I knew something wasn’t right…everyone seemed to be ignoring the trauma of my birth. Inside my head I was screaming, “WHAT JUST HAPPENED TO ME?? AM I OK?? AM I OK???.” And outside my head, I was waiting for someone, anyone, to acknowledge what a horrific thing I’d just been through. Continue reading “Healing Birth Trauma with TFT”

Rwandan Orphans Project Recommendation

This letter was written by the director of the Rwandan Orphans Project in support of the upcoming TFT project in Uganda, a collaborative humanitarian mission between the USA-based TFT Foundation, the U.K. ATFT Foundation, and the Mats Uldal Humanitarian Foundation, Norway.

The project will follow the TFT Foundation’s large-scale model for trauma relief which includes giving humanitarian relief through TFT and training local leaders in TFT so that they can continue the work after the relief teams have left. The project will also include a 3rd TFT/PTSD study, as well as a TFT/malaria study led by Dr. Howard Robson.

If you would like to help us promote world peace and relief from suffering through the upcoming Uganda project, you may donate by clicking here. However much you can help is greatly appreciated.