‘Walk and talk’ 3MDR psychotherapy for PTSD

BARCELONA – The therapeutic setting for individual psychotherapy has shifted over the years from the analytic couch, with the therapist discretely tucked out of sight, to facing chairs, a similarly sedentary format. The next evolutionary development might be to plop a patient with posttraumatic stress disorder on an exercise treadmill and don a virtual reality helmet to engage in an interactive motion-assisted form of psychotherapy in which the therapist stands alongside the walking patient while providing guidance on processing traumatic memories, Eric Vermetten, MD, PhD, said at the annual congress of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology.