This is pilot data to tease your research interests.

A group of researchers are looking for a partner in research to carry out a well-designed research project that would be duplicated by them in Argentina and Uruguay. These researchers are well established in Latin America.

The researchers have collected a lot of data from 11 clinics in the last 14 years. The pilot data to be discussed here has to do with two therapy interventions that have proven to be quite effective with patients in a number of outpatient clinics. The first is an adjunctive therapy. This therapy a procedure that involves tapping on acupressure points. It is very effective with all anxiety disorders. The following is an abstract of a report describing results from pilot studies exploring the tapping adjunctive therapy.

“Over two dozen separate studies were conducted. In the largest of these (and some of the other studies were sub-sets of this study), approximately 5000 patients were randomly assigned to receive CBT and medication or tapping treatments. Approximately 2,500 patients were in each group, with diagnoses including panic, agoraphobia, social phobias, specific phobias, obsessive compulsive disorders, generalized anxiety disorders, PTSD, acute stress disorders, somatoform disorders, eating disorders, ADHD, and addictive disorders. The study was conducted over a 5 1/2 year period. Patients were followed by telephone or office interviews at 1 month after treatment, 3 months, 6 months, and 12 months. “Positive clinical responses” (ranging from complete relief to partial relief to short relief with relapses) were found in 63 percent of those treated with CBT and medication and 90 percent of those treated with tapping techniques. Complete freedom form symptoms was found in 51 and 76 percent, respectively.”

“The number of sessions required to attain the positive outcomes also varied between the two approaches. In one of the studies, 96 patients with specific phobias were treated with a conventional CBT/medication approach and 94 patients with the same diagnosis were treated using a combination of tapping techniques and an NLP method called visual-kinesthetic dissociation (the patient mentally plays a short “film” of the phobic reaction while watching it from a distance, and then rapidly rewinds and replays it, gradually entering the film, until a “dissociation” from the triggering event is effected). Positive results were obtained with 69 percent of the patients treated with CBT/medication within 9 to 20 sessions, with a mean of 15 sessions. Positive results were obtained with 78 percent of the patients treated with the tapping and dissociation techniques within 1 to 7 sessions, with a mean of 3 sessions.”(1)

Although these results are impressive, the methods in both studies fall short of peer reviewed quality. If these data interest you and you are interested in considering doing some research either independently or in a matched research design in tandem with these researchers, please contact Dr. Joaquin Andrade. (2)

(1) by Joaquin Andrade, M.D. and David Feinstein, Ph.D.
See the entire report on 14 years of pilot data on tapping, N=29,000.

(2) Click to contact Dr. Joaquin Andrade.

Note: One of the tapping interventions is called Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT). The self help book,Emotional Freedom, is like a manual that presents a step by step description of the tapping treatment intervention. While most other EFT books elaborate on the basic intervention, this presentation is very close to the original development by Gary Craig. It is very clearly written and offers many supportive features. Click to go to Emotional Freedom web site. Persons interested in exploring research with EFT can contact the author to request a free copy of the book. Click here to contact the author. The book also has been used in college classes. EFT would be appropriate clinical intervention for use in simple research designs in laboratory classes. The treatment is safe and easy to do and, as you can see, gets good results.

The second treatment procedure is called Process Healing. This is a treatment technique involves teaching the subconscious or inner self to do the healing process. This treatment approach began in 1993 when the Dr. Flint noticed that a patient’s subconscious was able to do the tapping inside to heal trauma based issues. Process Healing has been developed extensively since then and is quite effective both for healing routine problems, like anxiety and trauma related issues, DID, etc., and for problem solving more difficult disorders like complex PTSD and personality disorders.Process Healing: The Dr. Andrade started exploring the use of Process Healing with patients that failed the tapping and CBT/medication interventions. With the first 100 patients, they found that they were getting 60 percent success. These results were based upon the Process Healing Course that is available in a PDF file (3). By the time they reached 200 patients, They were getting 65 percent success. The greater success came with familiarity with the treatment modality and by using additional treatment interventions provided by Dr. Flint. Dr. Andrade believes that he gets 60 to 70 percent effectiveness with outpatients when using EFT. With a little math, the projected effectiveness of Process Healing with outpatients is the following:Using the lower figures, with 60% success with Tapping and 60 percent success with Process Healing with tapping failures, the overall effectiveness of Process Healing could be 84 % with outpatients. This is impressive.

Taking the upper limits of the outcomes with 70% effectiveness with tapping and 65% effectiveness with Process Healing, the overall effectiveness of Process healing could be 89.5 %. Wow! Though hard to believe, this is an intervention that would be a good research project. The research group is also interested in doing well designed research with a researcher in North America or Europe. They are interested in both treatment outcome and the active ingredients of both interventions. If you are interested in research with Process Healing, Contact Dr. Andrade. (4)The researchers have done brain scan research with Process Healing and EFT. He has done 20 anxiety patients with LORETA tomography and other brain imaging devices. Before and after treatment with Process Healing that resulted in the remarkable summary data shown below:

Sorry, the summary data is in the process of being organized.

Interpretation Here.(4)(3) Click to get the link to download the Process Healing course in an executable PDF file (680 KB)

(4) Click to contact Dr. Joaquin Andrade regarding research with Process Healing. Go to the Process Healing Web site.

(N.B. The course referred to above is not currently full reconstructed from the Way Back Machine and some of the links may be slow to load or broken.)