Dr Ian Ellis-Jones ... Living Mindfully Now

NOTE. This blog is in recess. Nevertheless, you will find here over 500 of my posts exploring many aspects of spirituality, mindfulness, psychology, philosophy, literature and the performing arts. A member of the Australian and New Zealand Mental Health Association, I lectured at the NSW Institute of Psychiatry (now the mental health portfolio of HETI) for 14 years and at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) for 16 years. Mindfully yours, Ian Ellis-Jones PhD. 26 July 2021.

Showing posts with label Bessel van der Kolk. Show all posts

Friday, April 1, 2011

MINDFULNESS AND YOUTH TRAUMA

Neuroscientists, clinicians and PhD researchers are increasingly turning their attention to an area Buddhists and philosophers have been studying for more than two millennia: mindfulness. The number of serious scientific case studies of how mindfulness can help trauma victims has grown exponentially in the past few years.

One reason is that mindfulness is increasingly being associated with the kinds of positive social and emotional experiences that trauma victims often no longer feel, what clinicians describe as emotional numbness.

Ruth Lanius (pictured above), an associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Western Ontario, has been studying emotional awareness and mindfulness in complex post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) for several years, and has found direct correlations between mindfulness and brain activity.

Using MRI scans, Lanius found that the more mindful her subjects were, the more activation showed up in an area of the brain called the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex [“dmPFC” or "DMPFC"] (a brain region involved in reflective awareness).

There is good reason for all the interest in brain science and its affect on traumatized youth. For one, it's relatively cheap, and already the jury is in … the payoff of minor sums has been quite dramatic.

Secondly, a consensus is emerging among many therapists that far too many traumatized kids are being overmedicated. Last year alone, American children consumed $16.3 billion in anti-psychotic medication. Researchers like Dr Bessel van der Kolk and others say these medications are destroying children's capacity to engage in the world. "I bet half the kids on these medications will never be functional members of society," he said. "It's a national catastrophe."

Source: Scott Johnson Oakland Tribune All Rights Reserved
Posted: 03/30/2011 12:00:00 AM PDT Updated: 03/30/2011 09:28:12 AM PDT
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Monday, March 28, 2011

MINDFULNESS AND POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) may occur soon after a major trauma or it can be delayed for more than 6 months after the event. When the condition occurs soon after the trauma, it usually gets better after 3 months. However, some people have a longer-term form of PTSD, which can last for many years.

PTSD can occur at any age and can follow a natural disaster such as a flood or fire, or events such as war, a prison stay, assault, domestic abuse, or rape. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 in the United States of America may have caused PTSD in some people who were involved, in people who saw the disaster, and in people who lost relatives and friends. These kinds of events can produce stress in anyone, but not everyone develops PTSD.

“People take drugs to make their pain disappear, cut themselves, starve themselves, have sex once - you have these horrible sensations just to make it go away," said Dr Bessel van der Kolk (pictured below), one of the world's leading trauma experts, on the topic during a recent conference on trauma and brain science at UCLA.

"If these last long enough, your whole brain reacts. People learn to shut off the sensations in their bodies. We're also beginning to understand why traumatized people have such a hard time with mindfulness, because they cannot feel. People think trauma has something to do with out there. But the only thing that matters is now. Trauma is the residue of what those experiences leave in your body. It's the physical sensations that become intolerable, and you fight to make them go away."

The body - and not just the mind - contains memories, holds them, processes them in what ways it can, stores them and remembers them. As this memory storage develops, the neurons associated with the memory connect to other neural pathways in the body. The memories extend to other experiences. Seemingly unrelated events or situations can become triggers, for trauma does not exist in a relegated and circumscribed time and space continuum. Rather, it exists in the body and in the pathways it creates in the brain's neural networks.

It is now becoming increasingly clear that one effective way to deal with trauma is through the practice of mindfulness. The imprint of trauma lies in the central part of the brain. Being mindful helps untangle the sense of disorganization, or chaos, in the brain's relationship to itself. It helps re-establish coherent connections between the prefrontal cortex, which is the most "conscious" part of our brains, with the other, more primitive parts where trauma is stored, such as the limbic system. In short, the act of becoming more aware of each passing moment, with whatever emotions it contains, helps us control our emotional responses - which is what gets thrown out of line by trauma.

"Meditation and mindfulness can change all these things," van der Kolk said. "To feel yourself, to notice yourself."

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