A psychomotor diagnostic instrument for patients with post-traumatic stress disorder

Abstract

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is associated with an increased risk of physical disorders as a consequence of chronic stress reactions and adverse lifestyle behaviours. In addition, various other physical signs and symptoms may be present, as well as problems with emotional awareness, such as alexithymia, which may impede verbal information processing. Therefore, a psychomotor diagnostic instrument (PMDI) is developed, based on non-verbal information to contribute to a careful and reliable diagnostic procedure. The PDMI is designed to identify specific goals for body and movement oriented treatments of PTSD. It consists of a manual with an assessment procedure, guidelines for scoring items and for the calculation of cluster scores based on item scores. In this paper, the PMDI and its development are discussed, and illustrated by brief vignettes.

BEATVIC, a body-oriented resilience therapy for individuals with psychosis: Short term results of a multi-center RCT

“…Furthermore, proximal outcomes are recommended for future studies, such as non-verbal measures to test differences in arousal in social interactions and/or experience sampling to measure changes over time in interactions in daily life. For example, the PsychoMotor Diagnostic Instrument (originally developed for post-traumatic stress, PMDI [ 60 ]) may be suitable, as this assesses expected non-verbal outcomes of our intervention (e.g. stress level, physical fitness and vitality, trust and impulsive aggressive behavior).…”

Aktuelles aus der Forschung: Aktuelle Studien zu bewegungsbasierten Assessments und zur Korrelation zwischen Emotion und Bewegungsausdruc

“…Ein verbindendes Element dieser Ansätze ist die Annahme, dass durch die nonverbale Kommunikation von Bewegung auf psychologische Zustände wie Emotionen geschlossen werden kann. Aktuelle Beiträge in diesem interdisziplinären Bereich stehen in diesem Artikel im Fokus (Shafir et al 2016;Tsachor / Shafir 2017;van de Kamp et al 2018).…”

Feel-Own-Move: a psychomotor therapy program for victims of intimate partner violence living in shelter homes. Feasibility and effects on mental health, bodily dissociation, and quality of life

“…Traumatic experiences dysregulate neurochemical and psychophysiological usual responses to stress (Shepherd and Wild, 2014;Payne et al, 2015;Van der Kolk, 2015). In victims of recurrent violence and stress, among the major consequences of this chronic dysregulation, desensitization to stress triggers and numbing, or hyper-arousal chronic states have been reported as two possible extreme responses (Van der Kolk, 2015; Van de Kamp and Hoven, 2019). Hence, increasing research recommends a bottom-up approach as a starting point in the therapeutic work with trauma victims to facilitate arousal and affect regulation (Ogden et al, 2006;Van der Kolk, 2015;Van de Kamp and Hoven, 2019).…”

“…In victims of recurrent violence and stress, among the major consequences of this chronic dysregulation, desensitization to stress triggers and numbing, or hyper-arousal chronic states have been reported as two possible extreme responses (Van der Kolk, 2015; Van de Kamp and Hoven, 2019). Hence, increasing research recommends a bottom-up approach as a starting point in the therapeutic work with trauma victims to facilitate arousal and affect regulation (Ogden et al, 2006;Van der Kolk, 2015;Van de Kamp and Hoven, 2019). Diverse body-mind-oriented interventions have shown moderate to large effects on decreasing PTSD symptomatology in adults with diverse trauma origins (Van de .…”

“…Feel-Own-Move (FOM) is a PmT program specifically designed to be implemented in shelter homes, and its therapeutic mechanisms have been recently described (Marmeleira et al, 2023). Upon a safe, empathic and cohesive investment of the therapeutic space and of the therapeutic relationship, participants are invited to (i) experience interoceptive and proprioceptive sensations, (ii) become aware of bodily internal sensations and representations with a non-judgmental approach, (iii) experience and learn relaxation techniques, and (iv) express, through movement, writing, drawing and verbal and non-verbal communication, their body knowledge, insecurity, fears and desires (Caldwell and Victoria, 2011;Payne et al, 2015;Van de Kamp and Hoven, 2019;Björkman and Ekblom, 2022;Machorrinho et al, 2022;Marmeleira et al, 2023). FOM thus allows victims of IPV the safe embodiment of new internal and external representations.…”