By Siegfried Othmer, PhD

Surely among the most intractable of conditions encountered in mental health practice are victims of torture. A number of these were among the war refugees being cared for in Sweden, and they have not responded to conventional therapies over a period of years in most cases. After good experience with trauma victims with Infra-Low Frequency Training in Malmö, Sweden a few years ago, the Swedish Red Cross decided to do a small pilot study with torture victims with treatment-resistance PTSD of long standing. Five such individuals were entered into the study, which was to involve twenty sessions of ILF neurofeedback.

Read More »

By Glen Martin (Part II of III)

When I started EEG Biofeedback in the early nineties the focus was on ADHD. In comparison to today there was little understanding of what other disorders could be impacted by neurotherapy. Nevertheless, no matter who the person is or what their condition, EEG biofeedback is simply peak performance training. The Othmers were and still are two of the major pioneers in utilizing EEG biofeedback for an increasing number of conditions. Whenever skeptics question the efficiency of EEG biofeedback I think of my son. My son was one of the first bipolar individuals to be trained. Here is the story of how that came about.

Read More »

• by Alison Morris from Full Potential Parenting, part of the Healing our Children 2015 World Summit

By Glen Martin (Part I of III)

I started college in 1968 as a biology/geology major intending to teach in some local high school after graduation. Little did I know the twists and turns that my life would take and the changes I would see. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 had just made segregation illegal four years earlier. It took awhile, however, before the law was fully implemented. The number of ‘sundown towns’ where ‘coloured people’ within the city limits would be arrested after sundown didn’t peak until the early seventies.

Read More »

By Siegfried Othmer, PhD

The rapid rise in overdose deaths due to heroin is of frightening dimensions, showing an increase by a factor of six just since 2000. This is shown in Figure 1. Even so, this death rate is eclipsed by the overdose death rate for prescription opioids by nearly a factor of two (see Figure 2). Of course the two trends are closely coupled. It was in response to the overdose from prescription drugs that the campaign was launched to reign in the level of prescribing, and the user population is now finding its refuge in the heroin market.

Read More »

By Siegfried Othmer, PhD

“Do you believe in acupuncture?”
“Why yes. I’ve actually seen it done.”

The August issue of Scientific American not only featured a diatribe against facilitated communication, but also one against acupuncture. Really? Acupuncture? The article starts off by reminding us of how acupuncture first came to the attentions of the wider American public. Nixon’s visit to China in 1971 was the occasion. The use of acupuncture on columnist James Reston for post-operative pain was the signal event. The American medical establishment was resolutely uninterested, however, speculating that the Chinese might just be uniquely suggestible people. Americans would never fall for that kind of nonsense. But then they did.

Read More »