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In Reply to: Re: Very much so posted by JSP on February 20, 2006 at 19:23:54:
You're absolutely right about different talk therapies working or not working for people the same way different medications work or don't work. To the extent that the field is dominated by a "One size fits all" mentality, I believe it's an unfortunate consequence of poor training & supervision as well as the way services are reimbursed. Research shows that the therapeutic alliance between the practitioner and patient is among the most powerful predictors of improvement. Another major recovery factor is the client's perception that his or her needs are being met. The client's perception of treatment empowerment requires a highly individualized approach to treatment.
The effectiveness of EMT has shown mixed results in clinical trials, but there is much anecdotal evidence to support it, and it appears to do no harm. Besides EMT there's also a treatment for PTSD called Prolonged Exposure Therapy (PE), developed by Foa & Rothbaum. I'm personally adverse to PE as an approach, but there's evidence that it works, and it's being used with war vets. I'm currently supervising a small research project involving a PE program at a local university medical center, and I'm both curious and skeptical about this approach.
For the most part, my practice knowledge is primarily children and adolescents. Trauma-focused CBT is widely used on traumatized kids to reduce the psychological and emotional damage of an event or situation, so a treatment episode doesn't usually take years of processing. In any event, 10-12 sessions is a single treatment episode to designed to address specific behavioral & symptomatic issues--it doesn't mean the person will never return to treatment.
