Other psychotherapies

When people develop PTSD, their beliefs about security and the predictability of life are shaken. It is as though PTSD sufferers are grieving their loss of innocence about the sometimes-cruel realities of life. While work and the passage of time is a powerful antidote for sorrow, some may also benefit from psychodynamic psychotherapy—focused on the unpredictability of life and the inability to guarantee safety. The goal of such psychotherapy is to help the individual regain a balanced perspective on the risks we all face. Unfortunately, though psychodynamic therapy was the most widely practiced form of psychotherapy for many decades, its value as a treatment for PTSD appears slim, at best.

It is understandable that sufferers of PTSD would want to stop remembering and reliving their trauma. Hypnotherapists seem to offer the possibility of erasing these unpleasant recollections.

A therapy called eye movement desensitization reprocessing (EMDR) has had some positive results although some studies have found EMDR to be ineffective. When effective, it may be that EMDR is a form of exposure therapy as it asks people to hold the traumatic event in consciousness while moving their eyes in a particular manner. Other forms of exposure therapy simply employ exposure without eye movements, which have subsequently been shown to be neither sufficient nor necessary to achieve reduction in PTSD.

The Expert Consensus Panel was asked about EMDR, hypnotherapy and psychodynamic psychotherapy, but they did not rate these techniques highly for the treatment of PTSD.