hour period to feel rested and to function optimally varies from GROUP THERAPY FOR SEVERELY person to person. Our sleep patterns also change throughout TRAUMATIZED REFUGEES WITH A our lives. FOCUS ON SLEEP DISORDERS Sleep patterns All of the male participants and a couple of the women took sleeping medicine. Dosage was not changed during the project. Every man had suffered sleep problems for at least ten years. The duration of the women’s sleep problems varied from since childhood to two years. Childless women’s twenty-four-hour rhythm resembled the men’s, who stayed up, smoked, and followed the news on the Arabic channels, going to bed between 3:00 and 4:00 A.M. They slept a couple of hours interrupted by nightmares and had difficulty falling asleep again. Often, they did not sleep until first light. Women with children got up in the morning by Ursula Fürstenwald and typically took a nap later in the day. Although they went to bed before midnight, they often lay awake one to two hours, then slept a few hours interrupted by nightmares and periods of wakefulness. Ursula Fürstenwald, a psychologist and psychotherapist with OASIS—an organization using an interdisciplinary approach with counseling and treatment of Method and planning severely traumatized refugees suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder In addition to being interviewed using a questionnaire
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Hemi-Sync® Journal 2005-3&4 (Summer/Fall) · 1 Hemi-Sync Journal 2005-3&4 Summer-Fall.pdf
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(PTSD)—contacted TMI with a proposal for a pilot study using Hemi-Sync®. designed for the purpose, the participants filled out a sleep diary Serious sleep disturbances are one of the main secondary symptoms of PTSD, every morning to record what had happened during the night, especially for survivors of torture. Hemi-Sync was employed as an adjunct to focused including taking any stimulants and medicine that could affect group therapy in an attempt to relieve insomnia. The study was conducted in their sleep. The diary was delivered to the group leaders each Copenhagen, Denmark. This paper is based on a presentation made by Ursula and week. Group sessions consisted of client feedback, body thera- psychomotor body therapist Gita Nielsen at the ECOT Conference held in Berlin, py instruction, and theoretical psycho-education on sleep Germany, in May 2003. hygiene and the physical and psychological consequences of trauma. The women’s group also used “conflict-free imagery” Introduction and a Hemi-Sync® binaural-beat CD. For many years, OASIS has wanted to initiate a project dealing with sleep disorders. In 2000, we obtained economic Body therapy exercises support for such a project from the United Nations’ fund for The body therapy program was based on Dr. Edmund torture victims and carried out the first phase in 2001. Most Jacobsen’s neuromuscular training. Physiological studies have
traumatized people suffer from sleep problems. Lack of sleep in shown that a muscle that has been completely tensed and is itself can cause irritability and concentration and memory then relaxed has a lower degree of tension than before. This problems and thereby intensify a client’s other post-traumatic affects nervous system activity, which then regulates the stress stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms. The project’s objectives level and the condition of wakefulness. Each participant carried were to reduce the high level of nervous system activity and to out the same exercises in the group and at home while listening improve sleep quality. Group therapy was used, with the aid of to a special CD. Instructions were in Danish and Arabic for the an interpreter. Two groups completed the course of treatment. men and in Serbo-Croatian for the women. The men also went The first group consisted of five Arab men who were through a training program for headache relief twice. The already under treatment at OASIS. They met eight times for women’s group received training to relieve tension in the lower two hours once a week. The second group consisted of five back, shoulders, and neck. Several participants fell asleep dur- women—four Arab and one Bosnian. They met ten times for ing body therapy instruction. They said later that they would two and a half hours once a week. In addition to group thera- otherwise never do that with people outside their family.