Today, long-term therapy is categorized as “actualization” and cannot be billed to insurance as it does not relate to a disease category in the DSM. Instead, brief therapy of 2-3 sessions is billable and considered sufficient to deal with emotional illness.
There are excellent therapies for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). These therapies include EMDR, EFT, and WHEE. They are especially effective for eliminating the effects of past traumas, as well as lingering negative emotional states, such as anxiety, depression, fear, frustration, sadness, and anger. They have been effective in treating panic disorder, chronic pain, and addictive cravings. Following is a brief description of these therapies. Please keep in mind we do not feel these replace long-term therapy and a healing relationship with a therapist; we do believe that these therapies can be a helpful component in treating a serious mental imbalance in some cases, and that they may be more ideally suited to those with less serious mental illnesses.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is currently recommended by the American Psychiatric Association as a treatment of choice for PTSD and is considered as effective as cognitive-behavioral therapy. EMDR has an extensive research base to confirm its efficacy in treating PTSD and requires therapists to facilitate it, as it is complex and may catalyze extreme catharsis. It is based on unlocking specific sites where emotional pain is buried. It does not appear to have a “spiritual” basis.
Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT): Psychologist Roger Callahan and Stanford engineer Gary Craig developed EFT. The technique is gentle and quick. In a session, the client is instructed to recollect thoughts, feelings, or images of a painful situation (emotional or physical) of which he or she wants to be free (e.g., an irrational fear) while the practitioner guides him or her to gently tap specific points of the face, neck or chest. The tapping on specific points on meridians of the body neutralizes disruptions in the body’s electrical system, which stops the chemical chain reaction causing the unwanted response pattern and thus frees the client from the associated emotional and physical discomforts. As the client gently taps on a point, the neural receptors under the skin convert the pressure to an electrical impulse that is transmitted to the brain--similar to using a remote control or tapping a key on a keyboard to send an electrical signal to the computer generating the output, balancing the right and left hemispheres of the brain.
WHEE is a wholistic hybrid of EMDR and emotional freedom technique (EFT) created by psychiatrist, Daniel Benor. WHEE can be easily done without a therapist. Benor writes,
It invites the body to participate in releasing anxieties and stresses. It is a way to reduce the intensity of negative feelings and to reprogram negativity in general…You simply alternate tapping on the right and left side of your body while reciting an affirmation, and the negativity melts away. You can then use the same process to install positive feelings, beliefs and awarenesses--to replace the negativity you have released. This is not about doing away with issues so that we can forget, ignore or run away from them, but transforming the energy that has been locked up in trauma” (see http://www.wholistichealingresearch.com).
To repeat, although techniques for releasing trauma are available and psychotherapy is sometimes used, mainstream medicine and managed care focus on the biochemical roots of illness. After all, managed care visits with health professionals have been reduced to 15-20 minutes—time to review medications but not much else.
Spiritual Practices
As we abbreviate the human, empathic dialogues and treatments that take more than 15-20 minutes, do we add to a spiritual imbalance? Is this rushed way of life aggravating the very mental illnesses more people are seeking help for? What can people do to assist in their healing?
Spiritual practices such as mindfulness meditation (an offshoot of Buddhist practices) and varieties of Christian contemplative practices have also been helpful for those motivated to learn how to cope with pervasive symptoms of serious mental imbalances that are not easily released. These can often be learned and then practiced in groups associated with spiritual organizations or churches, as well as in weekend or weeklong retreats. One can find teachers who will teach the techniques for free.
Shealy and Church (2008, p. 25)’s research review found that spiritual practice and spiritual and religious beliefs have a marked positive influence on longevity and health. They have been found to:
•Improve the survival rate of patients after operations
•Ameliorate pain
•Raise levels of pleasure-inducing hormones in the brain
•Improve mental acuity
•Reduce depression
•Boost immune system function
•Reduce the time it takes wounds to heal
•Reduce the frequency and length of hospital stays
•Increase marital happiness in men
•Reduce alcohol consumption and cigarette smoking
•Reduce the incidence of cancer and heart disease
•Improve the health of older adults
•Add years to the average life-span
Spirituality involves each person in the quest for ultimate meaning and purpose in life. It supports connection to and relationship with the sacred dimensions of life and, with each other. A life directed by one’s spiritual intention is more likely, then, to move a person towards wellness.
Perhaps we have invested our financial resources into researching and treating serious mental illnesses primarily with drugs or our culture-specific modes of psychotherapy because we have let go of spiritual belief systems that previously gave meaning and context to our suffering, or we do not respect the resources available from other cultures because we are so wrapped up in material science. Watters (2010, p. 255) wrote:
What is certain is that in other places in the world, cultural conceptions of the mind remain more intertwined with a variety of religious and cultural beliefs as well as the ecological and social worlds.
Chapter Two: Approaching the Spiritual Side of Mental Illness
From Dysfunction to Extraordinary Functioning: One Man’s Path from Mental Illness to Mediumship
This is reprinted from Kardec’s Spiritism (Bragdon 2004, pp. 60-63). It is one of the clearest cases of a patient being assisted by the Spiritist integrative approach to helping someone diagnosed with schizophrenia.
Marcel Teles Marcondes came to Palmelo, Brazil in the spring of 2002. Although he had enjoyed a normal life (with no significant early trauma) with satisfying work as a travel agent, and many friends, he began to experience emotional problems when he was in his late 20s (in 1996). His father, Arnoldo Marcondes Filho, a bank manager for the Bank of San Paulo State, Banesba, was able to afford excellent medical care for his son, and took Marcel to the best psychiatrists in Sao Paulo.
Marcel was first diagnosed with depression, then schizophrenia. Anti-psychotics were prescribed as well as sleep medication. The prognosis: