DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE AWARDS GRANT TO THE CENTER FOR MIND-BODY MEDICINE
Date: October 22, 2008
The Washington, DC based Center for Mind-Body Medicine (CMBM) announced today that it has been awarded a $411,000, two-year grant from the newly formed Defense Center of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury, for a randomized controlled trial (RCT) to study the effectiveness of the CMBM’s comprehensive, non-drug approach to treating post-traumatic stress disorder and major depression with troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, and their families. This study, whose principal investigator is the CMBM founder and director, James S. Gordon, MD, will be undertaken at the Southeast Louisiana Veterans Healthcare System, and is entitled “A Randomized Controlled Study of Mind-Body Skills Groups for Treatment of War-Zone Stress in Military and Veteran Populations.”
The study will test the effectiveness of CMBM’s model, which includes mind-body approaches (meditation, guided imagery, biofeedback, and yoga) and self-expression in words, drawings, and movement, in supportive, educational small groups. The groups will be led by VA clinicians who have been trained by Dr. Gordon and his CMBM faculty and will be offered to veterans and their families on weekends over the course of three months.
Dr. Gordon’s model is widely used with anxious and depressed people and those with chronic illness in the US, and has already been incorporated as a stress reduction program for students in a dozen US medical schools. Dr. Gordon describes his groundbreaking approach in detail in his new book, Unstuck: Your Guide to the Seven Stage Journey Out of Depression (published by The Penguin Press; June 2008). “This model is educational, non-stigmatizing, and powerfully effective. It can be easily taught and can be used by people of all ages on their own,” Dr. Gordon explains. “Veterans and their families will have the opportunity to share their experiences and challenges in a supportive group and learn techniques which have proved swiftly effective in reducing symptoms of stress and improving mood. They will, often quickly, experience a sense of control and calm and feelings of hope that many of them felt they might never again have.”
The study made possible by the Department of Defense’s grant will further demonstrate that the Center’s model can be used to produce significant and lasting changes in levels of anxiety, agitation, and anger, in flashbacks and nightmares, and in symptoms of withdrawal and numbing in highly traumatized soldiers and their families.
This model, which Dr. Gordon presents in a step-by-step self-help format in Unstuck, is currently being used by CMBM with war traumatized populations in Kosovo, Israel and Gaza as well as in post-Katrina southern Louisiana. In August 2008, CMBM published a landmark study on the use of its model to treat posttraumatic stress disorder in war-traumatized children in Kosovo. The study, which was published online in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, is the first RCT ever of any intervention with war-traumatized children, and is also the first RCT of a successful, comprehensive mind-body approach with any traumatized population.
From October 25 - 29, 2008, Dr. Gordon and his CMBM colleagues will begin training more than 100 active duty and VA clinicians from across the country in the CMBM model. These men and women will then be able to incorporate the CMBM approach in their work with US Veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
