Somatic Experiencing Treatment With Tsunami Survivors in Thailand: Broadening the Scope of Early Intervention

Princess’ Mobile Medical Unit. The clinicians had been asked to provide information to local caregivers on topics such as normal responses to trauma, coping strategies after catastrophic events, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in adults and children. They were also asked to bring the brief stabilization model (now called Trauma First Aide [TFA], derived from Somatic Experiencing [SE]) to schools and evacuation camps. SE is an integrative, mind–body trauma treatment developed by Peter A. Levine (1996) that focuses on the resolution of posttraumatic-stress activation through re-establishing self-regulation. Because trauma begins with a conditioned response, it is important to extinguish the conditioned associations (Scaer, 2006). In Somatic Experiencing, this is accomplished by identifying and restructuring motoric and other psychophysiological patterns that underlie a wide variety of traumatic responses. Using sensorimotor processing to restructure traumabased psychophysiological patterns, SE links somatic with emotional and cognitive processing to help the mind–body system disentangle traumatic linkages On December 26, 2004, an underwater earthquake caused a deadly tsunami, the aftermath of which had a catastrophic effect on Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka, and Thailand and affected other countries as well. In southern Thailand, all of the provinces bordering the Andaman Sea suffered death and destruction, some more than others. With more than 4,200 deaths and thousands traumatized and displaced because of the destruction of their homes and villages, Phang Nga province was the most heavily damaged of the southern provinces. At the end of January 2005, 1 month after the tsunami, a team of nine North American clinicians affiliated with the Foundation for Human Enrichment (a trauma training center based in Colorado) traveled to Phang Nga province in southern Thailand. The team was sponsored by the counseling department of a Bangkok university and traveled with the Thai This exploratory study examines the treatment effects of brief (one to two sessions) Somatic Experiencing with 53 adult and child survivors of the 2004 tsunami in Thailand. Somatic Experiencing’s early-intervention model, now called Trauma First Aide, was provided 1 month after the tsunami. Survivor assessments were done pretreatment, immediately posttreatment, 3 to 5 days posttreatment, and at the 1-year follow-up. Results indicate that immediately following treatment, 67% of participants had partial to complete improvement in reported symptoms and 95% had complete or partial improvement in observed symptoms. At the 1-year follow-up, 90% of participants had complete or partial improvement in reported symptoms, and 96% had complete or partial improvement in initially observed symptoms. Given the small sample size and lack of an equivalent comparison group, results must be interpreted with caution. Nonetheless, the results suggest that integrative mind–body interventions have promise in disaster treatment.