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Post-traumatic Stress Disorder: A Review of Therapeutic Role of Meditation Interventions

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Book cover Respiratory Ailments in Context

Part of the book series: Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology ((NR,volume 1113))

Abstract

This review is an attempt to provide a comprehensive view of post-traumatic-stress disorder (PTSD) and its therapy, focusing on the use of meditation interventions. PTSD is a multimodal psycho-physiological-behavioral disorder, which calls for the potential usefulness of spiritual therapy. Recent times witness a substantial scientific interest in an alternative mind-to-body psychobehavioral therapy; the exemplary of which is meditation. Meditation is a form of mental exercise that has an extensive, albeit still mostly empiric, therapeutic value. Meditation steadily gains an increasing popularity as a psychobehavioral adjunct to therapy in many areas of medicine and psychology. While the review does not provide a final or conclusive answer on the use of meditation in PTSD treatment we believe the available empirical evidence demonstrates that meditation is associated with overall reduction in PTSD symptoms, and it improves mental and somatic quality of life of PTSD patients. Therefore, studies give a clear cue for a trial of meditation-associated techniques as an adjunct to pharmacotherapy or standalone treatment in otherwise resistant cases of the disease.

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Acknowledgements

Our thanks go to Rev. Harispaththuwe Ariyawansalankara Thero from Vipassana Meditation Center in Colombo, Sri Lanka; Dr. David R. Leffler, Executive Director of the Center for Advanced Military Science (CAMS) Institute of Science, Technology and Public Policy, Iowa; and Dr. Fred Travis, a post-doc fellow in basic sleep research at the University of California, Davis, CA.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest in relation to this article.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Registered Psychotherapist in Toronto, Ontario, Canada

    Ruwan M. Jayatunge

  2. Faculty of Physiotherapy, Opole Medical School, Opole, Poland

    Mieczyslaw Pokorski

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    Mieczyslaw Pokorski

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Jayatunge, R.M., Pokorski, M. (2018). Post-traumatic Stress Disorder: A Review of Therapeutic Role of Meditation Interventions. In: Pokorski, M. (eds) Respiratory Ailments in Context. Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology(), vol 1113. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/5584_2018_167

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