Body Therapy for War Veterans With Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

Background: A sizable proportion of soldiers involved in military missions are experiencing mental health and adjustment problems on their return, including PTSD. PTSD is both a psychological and a physical condition, which occurs as a post-reaction to one or more traumatic experiences. The symptoms include aggressive behaviour, difficulty sleeping, tiredness, anxiety, and social isolation, and many sufferers develop depression, and the war veterans are at a higher risk of suicide. Physiologically, people with PTSD experience an activation of their sympathetic nervous system, whereby the stress hormones adrenalin and cortisol are released, the heart rate increases, the blood pressure rises, and the body is geared toward a 'fight or flight' response. A major challenge for veterans with PTSD is emotional control and problems with reading their own and others' emotional state.

This study will provide a certain type of body therapy, called ManuVision, to war veterans with PTSD. ManuVision is a Danish developed body therapy working with direct physical treatment of the body and through this approach with the client's psychosocial resources. There are conversations during and before treatment, as appropriate, and trust is intentionally built from the first meeting through eye contact and open breathing on behalf of the ManuVision therapist. The treatment is based on the understanding that chock, trauma and stress are stored in the body blocking the muscles and breathing and affecting the nerve system.

The intervention in this project entails individual courses of body therapy including 24 treatment sessions over 6 months for veterans with PTSD, plus recommended daily meditation at home.

The study goals are to:

• Investigate how the body therapy treatment is implemented, and how the participants experience the treatment, respond to the treatment and which transformations participants experience in the everyday life (a process evaluation by qualitative methods).
• Compare the body therapy treatment with treatment as usual (TAU). Symptoms of PTSD, depression, function level, quality of life, and body awareness will be examined at pre-treatment, midway during the treatment period, post-treatment and, if possible, at follow-up to determine if symptoms change over time (an effect evaluation by quantitative methods).

The research questions are as follows:

A. How is the treatment implemented, how do the participants experience and respond to the treatment, and what characterizes the interaction between veteran and practitioner? B. In which ways do the veterans experience transformations, e.g. in terms of their body, feelings, social relations, everyday lives, quality of life, and handling their PTSD symptoms? C. What is the effect of the intervention on PTSD symptoms, quality of life, function level, depression and body awareness? D. Are there better outcomes for participants who received more treatment (i.e., number of treatment sessions)?

In order to answer the research questions A and B we will use participant observation, qualitative interviews, and focus group interviews with veterans, family members and practitioners.

In order to answer the research question C concerning the intervention's effect, appropriate statistical methods (e.g., Repeated measures ANOVA) will be used to analyse the differences between the intervention and the control group based on validated questionnaires.

Finally, a dose-response analysis is carried out (D) based on the practitioners' registered number of treatment sessions. This will support and refine the effect estimations.

Inclusion criteria

• Veterans
• Meet criteria for clinical PTSD or subclinical PTSD assessed by The Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (SCID)
• Demonstrate understanding of informed consent and normal cognitive skills

Exclusion criteria

• Current substance dependence (alcohol or drugs)
• Severe mental disorders such as schizophrenia, Bipolar I or II disorder, or current psychiatric conditions such as psychosis or mania