Archives
alternative therapies in psychiatry :: Article Creator Changing Definitions Of Trauma Are Leading To New Alternative Therapies When I was a resident at NYU in 2009, I worked extensively at Bellevue Hospital's Survivors of Torture Center. I was training to be a psychiatrist, seeing patients who'd endured unspeakable terrors in war-torn regions of Bosnia, Côte d'Ivoire, and Sri Lanka. Even though they shared similar experiences, their trauma presented itself differently. For some, there were little to no traumatic symptoms, while others could not escape their painful memories for more than a few hours a day. At the time, there was little consensus on whether you'd want to encourage patients to speak about their trauma, which could desensitize them to the negative emotions of the memory (an arguably positive result), or else risk retraumatizing them (an obviously negative result). As our knowledge of mental health expands, we are ...