Somatic Experiencing Trauma Intervention with Tsunami Survivors in Thailand

I would like to talk about the study that was conducted with Tsunami survivors in Thailand using Somatic Experiencing and Trauma First Aid (TFA). TFA is a form created out of the Somatic Experiencing model, specifically designed to be used in early trauma interventions. One month after the Tsunami hit a team of 9 clinicians affiliated with the Foundation for Human Enrichment (FHE), which is the non-profit organization that Somatic Experiencing is founded under, were invited by the counseling department of Bangkok university to introduce SE’s “brief stabilization model”.

These clinicians provided orientation and training about the somatic basis of trauma to groups of local caregivers (eg. teachers, university psychology students, administrators, and the Thai Red cross).  They provided individual 40-60 minute Somatic Experiencing/TFA treatments to 53 adults and children. In this study there was a focus on “dysregulated biological responses”, as well as cognitive and emotional responses.58  Using the Somatic Experiencing model, practitioners worked with people’s horrifying stories of losing their entire families, and supported them in stabilizing their physiology and unpacking the high level of nervous systems arousal in their body from experience of the Tsunami.  In Leitch’s study “Somatic Experiencing Treatment with Tsunami Survivors in Thailand: Broadening the Scope of Early Intervention”, she reports a touching story of one survivor: “His mother, sister and grandmother died in the waves. Father was trying to hold all their hands but couldn’t. He was tumbled by the waves and survived by clinging to a floating refrigerator.  Has been searching for grandmother’s body.  Sees the wave when he closes his eyes”.59

The common symptoms of tsunami survivors reported to the clinicians were “worry, anxiety, fear, auditory and visual flashbacks, sadness, hyper vigilance, concentration problems, muscle tension, and shallow breathing.60  Symptoms were addressed in a titrated fashion, with a focus placed on building internal resources and deactivating the high charges of stress and emotions using the Somatic Experiencing paradigm.  The results of the study show that 67% of participants showed complete or partial improvement in reported symptoms and a 95% showed complete or partial improvement in observed symptoms immediately following the sessions.  One year after the treatments, the participants who were located had maintained the improvements.   90% showing complete or partial improvements in reported symptoms and 96% showing complete or partial improvement in observed symptoms.59  These results suggest that biologically based approaches to trauma interventions in disaster relief settings are effective.

In her article, Laurie Leitch highlights the importance of Trauma First Aid’s early intervention model.  She states, “In disaster setting, in which survivors are often difficult to locate for more than a single session, brief intervention models are extremely relevant.”.61  Early interventions providing mental health to survivors of traumatic events have been found to shorten the period of suffering.62  If individuals can receive this type of physiological support soon after the event occurred and discharge the excess survival energy, the patterns of disruptions within them will not continue to ripple out into their lives.  The inner stability and self-regulatory tools that can be established within their nervous system early on, will provide a resiliency within which they can move forward and face long road of hardships that lay ahead.

Laurie Leitch, PhD  and Elaine Miller-Karas, MSW are co-directors of the Trauma Resiliency Institute (TRI) and together have conducted studies documenting the effectiveness of using psycho-biologically based approached in trauma intervention. They have adapted the teaching of Somatic Experiencing into a model known as the Trauma Resiliency Model (TRM) “Compassion without borders”.  They’ve conducted formal studies on the effectiveness of the application of TRM/Somatic Experiencing in Thailand with Tsunami survivors, in the United States with social service worker in hurricane Katrina and Rita, and in China with survivors of the recent earthquake.63  I have great appreciation for the research they’ve conducted, as it poignantly contributes to the recognition of this movements approach and its effectiveness in global trauma interventions.