Steve Hicks School of Social Work, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA.
Trauma Violence Abuse. 2020 Jul;21(3):541-550. doi: 10.1177/1524838018781103. Epub 2018 Jun 11.
Neurofeedback is an innovative treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that is readily accessible to mental health therapists. As a widespread mental health concern with potentially devastating long-term consequences on psychosocial functioning, PTSD can also adversely impact biophysiological processes, particularly those related to the brain. Neurofeedback has shown promise in alleviating overall PTSD symptoms, including these underlying neurobiological consequences. Successful results have been found among clients with PTSD who have not been responsive to prior treatment modalities. While a strong base of clinical anecdotes and case studies supports its success in treating PTSD, intervention studies on neurofeedback have been critiqued for lack of rigor and poor methodological design. A current systematic review of the literature on the effectiveness of neurofeedback in treating PTSD was conducted. Unlike prior reviews which emphasized neurobiological changes, this study was written for the mental health therapist and focused solely on behavioral outcomes. Ten studies met the criteria for inclusion in this review. Neurofeedback demonstrated salubrious results in at least one outcome measure for the majority of participants across all studies. Interpretations, however, are limited by wide discrepancies in sample sizes, study designs, outcome measures, and the extent of reported results. Future research in this area would benefit from prioritizing randomized controlled trials with larger sample sizes and longitudinal follow-up results.
神经反馈是一种针对创伤后应激障碍（PTSD）的创新治疗方法，易于心理健康治疗师使用。作为一种广泛存在的心理健康问题，PTSD 可能对心理社会功能产生潜在的破坏性长期影响，也会对生物生理过程产生不利影响，尤其是与大脑相关的过程。神经反馈已被证明在缓解 PTSD 的整体症状方面具有潜力，包括这些潜在的神经生物学后果。对于那些对先前治疗方式没有反应的 PTSD 患者，已经取得了成功的结果。尽管大量的临床轶事和案例研究支持其在治疗 PTSD 方面的成功，但神经反馈干预研究因缺乏严谨性和较差的方法学设计而受到批评。目前对神经反馈治疗 PTSD 的有效性进行了文献的系统回顾。与之前强调神经生物学变化的综述不同，本研究是为心理健康治疗师撰写的，仅关注行为结果。符合纳入标准的研究有十项。在所有研究中，大多数参与者在至少一个结果测量中，神经反馈显示出有益的结果。然而，由于样本量、研究设计、结果测量以及报告结果的程度存在很大差异，因此解释受到限制。该领域的未来研究将受益于优先进行具有更大样本量和纵向随访结果的随机对照试验。
