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Post traumatic stress disorder responds to integrative medicine
A recent article in the Boston Globe documents the work of Dr. Michael Grodin of the Boston University School of Public Health, who has treated Tibetan monks for post traumatic stress syndrome for 15 years with a combination of Western concepts and Eastern treatments. The monks have suffered from being tortured and kept as political prisoners.
The article, http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/03/13/west_treats_east/?page=2, describes Dr. Grodin’s diagnosis as Tibetan “Srog-rlung,” an imbalance of the “life-wind,” and added Eastern treatments to the Western antidepressants he prescribed.
Dr. Grodin published his research in the journal Mental Health, Religion, and Culture, where he and his colleagues at Boston Medical Center’s refugee health center describe the East-West treatment he tailored for Tibetan monks in Boston. The treatment included Taoist breathing, musical bowl-playing, and Eastern movement practices such as Tai Chi and Qigong, along with Western-style talking therapy and medications.
This study is the first published paper to describe attempts to integrate Western and Tibetan medicine to help traumatized monks. Grodin is a professor of human rights, psychiatry, and community medicine at Boston University School of Medicine. The treatment he has developed fits into something called cross-cultural psychiatry, which uses culturally sensitive mental health care for immigrant groups. It includes working with foreign medical interpretations, such as the Tibetan belief that many ills come from problems with the “life-sustaining wind” that controls the body’s health and harmony.
Grodin’s treatment is also an example of “integrative medicine,” combining mainstream healthcare with alternative or complementary therapies such as traditional herbs, meditation, or yoga. Integrative medicine is increasingly being tried for post-traumatic stress disorder. Dr. Robert Saper, director of integrative medicine at Boston Medical Center, said integrative medicine is beginning to show tremendous promise in treating certain problems.
This week, Tibetans outside China marked the 50th anniversary of an uprising against Chinese rule that failed, forcing the Dalai Lama, Tibetans’ spiritual leader, into exile. The Chinese government has accused the Dalai Lama of fomenting separatism. The Dalai Lama says that he is only seeking autonomy and more religious freedom to help preserve Tibet’s culture.
Many Tibetan monks have been imprisoned for protesting China’s occupation of Tibet, and many now live in India or America in exile. The painful memories of the Tibetan monks treated by Dr. Grodin kept them from being able to meditate, part of their religious practice. Normally, Tibetan monks can seek healing from meditating. But the monks Grodin treated found that the process of meditating only seemed to make them feel worse.
Dr. Grodin said that meditation reduces the brain’s ability to block unpleasant thoughts and memories and instead unleashes them. He has seen a similar process in aging Holocaust survivors. He said as they begin to suffer from dementia, their brains become less able to inhibit bad memories, and they sometimes believe they are back in concentration camps. Unfortunately, the very process that would normally help the monks instead made them worse. Grodin introduces other relaxation techniques, such as breathing and Tibetan “singing bowls,” which vibrate melodically when rubbed by a mallet, while working to heal their psychic wounds by talking and other methods.
An additional challenge is that the political situation that led to the monks’ imprisonment and exile continues. While therapy for a traumatized war veteran might consists of convincing him/her that he/she is now safe, the monks worry that their loved ones in Tibet are not safe. They suffer from homesickness and from guilt that they are not there. It was worse last summer when China clamped down on pro-Tibet protesters during the Olympics.
