A New Home for Nightmare Treatment
 Military personnel returning from wars in Afghanistan and Iraq show increasing rates of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and post-traumatic nightmares. Media coverage of these two vexing mental health conditions is also intensifying and raising public awareness about the need for more effective therapeutic options. With growing attention focused on patients with nightmares, sleep centers have an opportunity to engage these patients. Successfully doing so hinges on applying a standard of care for nightmare assessment and treatment through behavioral sleep medicine specialists.
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Read more... [Behavioral Sleep Clinics | April 2011 | Sleep Review]
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Her car is racing at a terrifying speed through the streets of a large city, and something gruesome, something with giant eyeballs, is chasing her, closing in fast.
It was a dream, of course, and after Emily Gurule, a 50-year-old high school teacher, related it to Dr. Barry Krakow, he did not ask her to unpack its symbolism. He simply told her to think of a new one.
“In your mind, with thinking and picturing, take a few minutes, close your eyes, and I want you to change the dream any way you wish,” said Krakow, founder of the PTSD Sleep Clinic at the Maimonides Sleep Arts and Sciences center in Albuquerque and a leading researcher of nightmares.
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Read more... [In wildest dreams, a shot at reshaping nightmares | NWAonline]
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Sleep Treatment - Cures for Sleep Disorders
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| At the Forefront of Sleep Medicine |
11/4/2011 - WASHINGTON (AFNS) -- Ghoulish figures, demonic clowns, man-eating zombies and vampires. There was enough frightening stuff out there this Halloween that even the most fearless may have been spooked this year. So which of these nightmares are still keeping you up at night?
For some individuals out there, Halloween was not their only nightmare of the year. As many as 25 percent of the adult population will wake up after an intense and fearful vision brings them out of their rest. In fact, almost three percent of adults were reported to have nightmares frequently to always, based on the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, DSM-IV-TR."
The Wilford Hall Clinical Health Psychology Center at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, which specializes in behavioral sleep medicine, defines a nightmare as a frightening and complex dream that may lead to being awakened from sleep. These dreams are often a lengthy, elaborate dream sequence that is highly anxiety-provoking or terrifying. They may also become a beneficial habit after a traumatic event that leads to post-traumatic stress disorder and a way of processing the event. After time, these nightmares actually are reduced to being just a bad habit and involve the individual reliving the traumatic event multiple times over again.
"Many people do not realize that frequent nightmares may be able to be treated at one of our behavioral sleep clinics," said Capt. (Dr.) JoLyn Tatum, a Wilford Hall Clinical Health Psychology Center fellow. "We treat nightmares as a behavioral problem and use a form of treatment called 'imagery rehearsal therapy' in our 'Nightmare Class' offered at the clinic."
The Nightmare Class was developed from the studies of Dr. Barry Krakow, the Maimonides International Nightmare Treatment founder and a board certified sleep disorders specialist.
Dr. Krakow developed the technique of imagery rehearsal therapy, which basically consists of educating the individual on how to change the frightening imagery through techniques of rescripting the nightmare.
Her car is racing at a terrifying speed through the streets of a large city, and something with giant eyeballs is chasing her, closing in fast. It was a dream, of course, and after Emily Gurule, a 50-year-old high school teacher, related it to Dr Barry Krakow, he simply told her to think of a new one.
“In your mind, with thinking and picturing, take a few minutes, close your eyes, and I want you to change the dream any way you wish,” said Dr Krakow, founder of the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Sleep Clinic at the Maimonides Sleep Arts and Sciences centre in New Mexico, US, and a leading researcher of nightmares.
more from www.indianexpress.com by Barry Krakow, MD | IMCJ | Read more
 Too much debate and discussion on health care reform ignores a singularly important fact about the advent of alternative medicine; namely, it was not fostered by the government, insurance carriers, the pharmaceutical industry, or trial lawyers. Its exponential growth is largely due to the actions of people (both patients and practitioners) living in a land of liberty and opportunity who were looking for new choices to better health. It is without caveat one of the finest examples of the free enterprise system in the United States—a place where the market worked its magic by offering that which is now perceived by much of the public as an affordable, safe, and potentially higher-quality service or product than that provided through conventional fields of medicine.
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Last Updated on Wednesday, 27 October 2010 16:41 |
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