The TFT Foundation is excited to announce the publication of its 2009 PTSD study and work in Rwanda.  It has taken a long time and a lot of effort by many, and led by our board member, and Trauma Relief Committee chair, Suzanne Connolly.

It was a long time coming but, I think, an important article in a well read journal by those interested in helping Africa recover from trauma.  I would also like to thank the Peter C. Alderman Foundation for their assistance in edit corrections.

The entire study can be found on page 24 of the June 2013 Issue of the African Journal of Traumatic Stress, found here: http://petercaldermanfoundation.org/AfricanJnl/AJTS_V1N5.pdf

I wish to thank all the members of the TFT Community, The Paton Family Trust, The PepsiCo Foundation and the Ruth Lane Foundation for their support to complete this work.

The abstract is below.

Abstract

The use of Thought Field Therapy (TFT), a brief therapy technique, is examined in a study titled, Utilizing Community Resources to Treat PTSD: A Random Controlled Study Using Thought Field Therapy, to determine if there is a significant difference in the reduction of trauma symptoms between the treated group and the untreated group post treatment.

Study participants in the waitlist group received treatment after having completing the posttest.  One-hundred and sixty four adult survivors of the 1994 Rwandan genocide received a one-time trauma-focused TFT intervention in this randomized waitlist controlled study. Prior to the study,TFT techniques were taught to community leaders, who then provided them in their native language, Kinyarwanda, to the participants during an individual session. Pre- and post-intervention surveys of trauma symptoms included the Trauma Symptom Inventory (TSI)

(Briere, 1995) and the Modified Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Symptom Scale (MPSS) (Falsetti, Resnick, Resnick, & Kilpatrick, 1993). After one week, significant differences were found in trauma symptoms and level of PTSD symptom severity and frequency between the treatment and the waitlist control groups. Participants in the waitlist group experienced significant reductions in trauma symptoms following their treatments,which took place after the first posttest.  These positive outcomes suggest that a one-time, community leader facilitated trauma-focused intervention may be beneficial with protracted PTSD in genocide survivors.