Medicine / 7.Clinical medicine

Danilevska N.V., Marchenko E.P.

Zaporizhzhya state medical University Ministry of Public health of Ukraine, Zaporizhzhya, Ukraine

A new therapeutic technique of "subliminal verbal suggestion" for soldiers treatment with PTSD

The main fact of our research is that the subliminal by its power of sound verbal information, not unavailable to the audition person, perceived on a subconscious level, processed and affects his feelings, thoughts and behavior [1–7].

This knowledge has helped us in the development of technique of soldier’s psychotherapy with PTSD.

It is known that, firstly, the soldiers in the adaptive force for military action of behavior, are not inclined to trust others, and therefore not predisposed to full compliance in psychotherapy.

And so worry that block any psychotherapeutic formulas is conviction.
We can take a long while to convince a soldier that «the fighting is over and you can relax», but he will not accept this information and will remain tense, in anticipation of danger.

Secondly, any psychotherapeutic conversation with PTSD patients, may remind him of the traumatic situation and provoke a flashback. For example, such known methods as "Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing" on the first stages can be painful for patients because of the fact that causes patients to remember painful experiences. Because of this, patients often refuse any form of treatment.

But if convey this information through the "subliminal verbal suggestion", the soldier will accept it subconsciously, without critical reflection from the side of consciousness and admit it.

"Subliminal verbal suggestion" allows to heal psychological trauma without painful patient’s memories, because the patient is not consciously hear the therapeutic formula, but subconsciously perceives them.

In our research, we have defined the most common causes of PTSD in soldiers and recorded on audio the possible information. For example, more often the soldiers feel tension, because subconsciously they expected danger from every where their lives are threatened. In this case sanogenic formula sounded: "it's safe, you can relax." Then a record become more, it was not heard on the background of other sounds. And impose on it a neutral tone.

We formed two groups of patients: soldiers from the first group (30 mans; 32±0,86 years old) listened to the soundtrack with hidden subliminal suggestion within half an hour during the week. The second group of soldiers (32 mans; 34±0,72 years old) listened to the same melody, but without no hidden formulas.

Even after the third session in the first group we noted a decrease in anxiety and nightmares, improvement of dream sleep, reduction of the somatic form and conversing manifestations, associated with trauma, and a reduction of flashback (p≤0.01) (illustration 1, 2).

Illustration 1. The results of the study using the Hospital Anxiety Scale

Illustration 2. The results of the study using the Mississippi Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Scale 
 

These indicators were significantly better than the control group of patients, who listened to the same melody, but without hidden verbal formulas.

Thus, our developed method has proven its efficiency and allows to:

– successfully conduct the psychotherapy of patients with impaired compliance, which consciously block the therapeutic setting;

– get a more rapid therapeutic effect, which is very important in the environment of soldiers, who are continuosly to situate in war conditions;

– to achieve a therapeutic effect without retraumatization of patients because of reminders in the process of psychotherapy of traumatic event. To avoid episodes of flashbacks.

References:
 

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