Can reading a magazine story  destigmatize mental illness?
Jan's thesis
(the pic above is from convocation)
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~ Precis (pdf)
~ In its entirety (word doc)

_BACKGROUND: Little is known about the neurobiological foundations of psychotherapy for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Prior studies have shown that PTSD is associated with altered processing of threatening and aversive stimuli. It remains unclear whether this functional abnormality can be changed by psychotherapy. This is the first randomized controlled treatment trial that examines whether narrative exposure therapy (NET) causes changes in affective stimulus processing in patients with chronic PTSD.

METHODS: 34 refugees with PTSD were randomly assigned to a NET group or to a waitlist control (WLC) group. At pre-test and at four-months follow-up, the diagnostics included the assessment of clinical variables and measurements of neuromagnetic oscillatory brain activity (steady-state visual evoked fields, ssVEF) resulting from exposure to aversive pictures compared to neutral pictures.

RESULTS: PTSD as well as depressive symptom severity scores declined in the NET group, whereas symptoms persisted in the WLC group. Only in the NET group, parietal and occipital activity towards threatening pictures increased significantly after therapy.

CONCLUSIONS: Our results indicate that NET causes an increase of activity associated with cortical top-down regulation of attention towards aversive pictures. The increase of attention allocation to potential threat cues might allow treated patients to re-appraise the actual danger of the current situation and, thereby, reducing PTSD symptoms.   

Investigators: Adenauer H, Catani C, Gola H, Keil J, Ruf M, Schauer M, Neuner F.

Citation: BMC Neuroscience, Dec. 19, 2011;12(1):127. [Epub ahead of print

Link to abstract.

Narrative Exposure Therapy

NET combines elements of two trauma-focused PTSD therapies:
• exposure therapy where the person is encouraged to repeatedly talk about the traumatic event and re-experience the associated emotions
• testimony therapy where the person constructs a narration about their life from birth up to the present, with a focus on detailed reporting of the traumatic experiences of war and torture.
More.