Thanks to your post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), you’re often jumpy, stressed, and hyperreactive and negative thoughts swirl uncontrollably around your head. And you’re feeling more than just a little overwhelmed at not being able to quiet and control your brain.
First, we want to assure you that you are most certainly not alone in this — about 1 in 11 people will develop PTSD at some point in their lives.
Second, we want to introduce you to a new approach for managing PTSD called Prism. At the Institute for Advanced Psychiatry, Dr. Diana Ghelber and our team are always on the lookout for innovative ways to approach mental health, and Prism is an exciting addition. In fact, we were the first practice in Texas to offer this FDA-cleared treatment for PTSD.
Here’s a look at how Prism can help people with PTSD regain control of their brains — and their lives.
Many of the thoughts and reactions that are associated with PTSD originate in the amygdala. This area of your brain is responsible for processing emotions like fear and anxiety, and it lies at the heart of your fight-or-flight stress response.
With Prism, our goal is to help you gain more control over the activity in your amygdala through self-neuromodulation.
To start, we rely on a harmless electroencephalogram (EEG), which we use to measure your brain activity. Then we launch a computer simulation that’s full of agitated and noisy avatars that are representative of stress.
While you’re hooked up to the EEG, you try different relaxation and visualization techniques to quiet the avatars in the simulation. These avatars calm as your EEG registers less agitation in the biomarkers in your amygdala.
Using the Prism biofeedback technique, you have a visual aid to help you reduce stress in situations that you find triggering.
As you perfect your relaxation and visualization techniques, not only can you see the results in the simulation, you can try them out in real-world situations.
To give you an idea about how successful Prism is in helping patients with PTSD, one study found that 32% of participants achieved remission after using Prism and 67% of participants had clinically significant improvements.
It’s best to think of Prism as you would training in a gym — you do repetitive exercises to get the desired results. Most patients with PTSD benefit from an initial series of 15 Prism sessions during which they learn to quiet and relax their brain activity during stressful situations.
Once you feel that you’ve gained some good control over your emotions and reactions, you can build on this in-office work in your day-to-day world.
We also want to highlight that Prism is noninvasive and enjoys a stellar track record when it comes to safety. As such, it can be a great adjunct therapy for PTSD, though it might also serve as a standalone treatment for some.
To see for yourself how well Prism works in helping you to better regulate your brain activity when you have PTSD, we invite you to contact our office in Fort Worth, Texas, to schedule a consultation.
