Neurokinex Neurological Activity Based Rehabilitation

This week I paid a visit to Neurokinex Gatwick UK. Please follow the link to their web page to find out more about the unique work they are doing. 

Chosen as the first international NeuroRecovery Community Fitness and Wellness Affiliate of the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation, Neurokinex provide pioneering neurological activity based rehabilitation for various forms of paralysis, which includes the recent 'Neurokinex-Kids', a unique program especially for the rehabilitation of children. 

Neurokinex rehabilitation focuses upon spinal cord injury, brain injury, stroke, transverse myelitis, multiple sclerosis and other such conditions that result in neuromuscular impairment.

Unlike more traditional approaches the Neurokinex rehabilitation and wellbeing programmes target the entire nervous and musculoskeletal systems rather than only the functional areas of the body. The programmes consist of a variety of weight-bearing activities, balance and stand training, gait and locomotor training, electrical stimulation, upper and lower body ergometry, vibration therapy and strength training. Task-specific exercises are carefully devised incorporating activities with skilled trainers and specialised rehabilitative equipment.

Many clients had been told they would never be able to perform certain physical activities again, such as being able to roll over or even regain use of their legs. Through using state of the art equipment brought over from the USA the brilliant staff at Neurokinex have achieved results far beyond expectations.

Hypnotherapy and How it Can Affect Your Psychological Well-Being

Hypnotherapy and How it Can Affect Your Psychological Well-Being
We all want to achieve peace of mind, and we can try to achieve this through therapy. A good therapist is able to help you feel better about yourself, teach you how to cope with difficulties you’re facing or struggling through, and/or they may help you to make a plan to achieve your goals.

There are many types of therapy out there, as people cope in different mannerisms. One form of therapy may change one client’s life, while it may be less effective to another. In this post, we’ll look at hypnotherapy, one of the more unique forms of therapy out there.

What is the Difference Between Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy?
When you think of hypnosis, you may imagine it as it’s all-too-often portrayed in media: a hypnotist putting their patient to sleep by waving a pocket watch in front of their eyes. Once the patient is asleep, they hypnotist is able to guide and control them in their trance-like state. For example, the hypnotist may tell the patient that when they wake up, they will be transformed into a chicken. Then, at the hypnotist’s prompting, the patient wakes up and clucks and starts flapping their arms.

This example is of course an exaggeration of how hypnosis works. Hypnosis is the main tool that is used in hypnotherapy. Hypnosis as it relates to hypnotherapy does involve a hypnotherapist guiding a patient into a relaxed and focused state. Once they are in the state, they may be more open to suggestion and less inhibited. For example, if the patient comes in to learn how to control their anger, the therapist may suggest anger management techniques and how to utilize them when they are in this state. The idea is that when they ‘wake up’ from this state, they will be more prone to listening to the suggestions made regarding their anger management, and will be more able to act upon those techniques.

With all that said, what can hypnotherapy do for you? Is it all that it’s cracked up to be? Can it really change your psychological well-being?

What Hypnotherapy Can Treat
Here is a small list of conditions that hypnotherapy may be able to treat.
* Fears – If you want to conquer a fear (or two) that you may have, a hypnotherapist may help you learn to calm yourself in that situation through visualization. For example, a hypnotherapist may teach you to visualize walking down a staircase to one of your favorite calm and tranquil places, and taking in the sights around you. Whenever you are faced with your fear, you can recall this visualization to help you get through your fear – perhaps if you are afraid of flying, when you are waiting for takeoff, you can work through this visualization.
* Pain – a hypnotherapist may tell you that you are less sensitive to your pain than you realize, and this can help reduce your feelings of pain.
* Insomnia – in addition to instituting a healthy sleep-hygiene routine, hypnotherapy can decrease insomnia and other sleep-related disorders, including nightmares, night terrors, and sleepwalking.
* Addiction – hypnotherapy makes the practitioner more receptive to behavior modification suggestions, so you may be able to relieve some of the symptoms of withdrawal without having to resort to medication.
* Emotional issues – the simple relaxation that you may feel when undergoing hypnotherapy mya help alleviate feelings of sadness, depression, anxiety, or anger.

Hypnotherapy’s effectiveness is different for everyone, but there are patients that have been able to increase their well-being and live a better life, with the help of their therapist.

Finding a Hypnotherapist Near You
If you are interested in hypnotherapy and if it could work for you, do your due diligence in researching therapists that specialize in this type of therapy. Find someone that is properly trained, and is also licensed and credentialed. Who knows – this may be the technique that works for you and changes your life!

By Marie Miguel

Biography

Marie Miguel has been a writing and research expert for nearly a decade, covering a variety of health- related topics. Currently, she is contributing to the expansion and growth of a free online mental health resource with Better Help. With an interest and dedication to addressing stigmas associated with mental health, she continues to specifically target subjects related to anxiety and depression.

What is Psychiatry?

What is Psychiatry?
According to the American Psychiatric Association, psychiatry is a field of medicine which diagnoses, treats and prevents a wide wide range of psychological disorders. 

What is a psychiatrist?
Psychiatrists must be medically qualified doctors who have specialised in psychiatry, which is different from most other mental health professionals. Psychiatrists can therefore prescribe medications as well as using psychological treatments. (NHS)

What conditions does psychiatry diagnose and treat? 
A non-exhaustive list via NHS

• anxiety 
• phobias 
• obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD)
• post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) 
• personality disorders 
• schizophrenia and paranoia
• depression and bipolar disorder
• eating disorders, such as anorexia and bulimia
• sleep disorders, such as insomnia
• addictions, such as drug or alcohol misuse

Diagnosis

Due to their medical expertise, psychiatrists are able to perform both psychological and medical assessments to provide detailed analysis of a condition. Psychiatrists understand the intricate link between physical and psychological illness and take time to evaluate family history of illness to get a very complete understanding of patient issues in order to develop treatment plans. 

Treatment
Psychiatry takes form in a wide ranging variety of treatments. Different therapies can be combined with medications depending upon the individual needs of the patient as per the diagnosis.  

Depending on the severity of the condition psychiatry can take a couple of sessions, or be an ongoing process of treatment that can take several years. One of the biggest criticisms aimed at psychiatry in the past has been that treatment can potentially go on indefinitely, which can obviously be very expensive and time consuming for both the patient and medical services. 

Examples of treatments include psychotherapy , psycho-social interventions or Electroconvulsive Therapy ECT. 

Examples of medications include; antidepressants (depression, panic disorder, PTSD, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, borderline personality disorder and eating disorders), sntipsychotic medications (delusions/hallucinations, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder), sedatives and anxiolytics (anxiety, insomnia). The general idea of medications is to attempt to correct chemical imbalances in the brain that are considered to be the cause of psychological dysfunction.

Couples Therapy: Addiction

Addiction is a worldwide epidemic. Sugars, nicotine, gambling, pornography; we humans appear to have something ingrained within our nature that makes us become compulsive, and once the habit becomes set it is incredibly difficult to move away from it. Add chemical addiction to a behavioural habit and you have a recipe for a life-threatening condition.  

The addicted individual must genuinely want to make a change. It’s a cliche we have all heard, but one very true and the first step toward making any kind of change. How one fosters that motivation is the million-dollar question. Encouragement, education, doctor’s warnings, bodily dysfunction, scientific facts, threats - each have varying levels of success. Many will just take time to process all the information until they find a point in their life where they just feel ready to change, or sometimes they sadly never will.

Hypnotherapy can’t work without motivation, and neither will prescribed medications.

With couple’s therapy in addiction it is much the same thing. There needs to be motivation to work, but if both people buy into the idea of being free from addiction then the added support that brings through companionship in the journey can be priceless. You want to be free from addiction for yourself and so your partner can be free and healthy too. Often doing something for someone else’s benefit has an even stronger motivating force.

In an ideal world couples will support one another and promote positive change, although sadly this is not always the case and is why professional help is often sought.  

Partners can negatively affect us. Imagine you are trying not to eat biscuits while your partner consumes them in front of you night and day, leaves packets around the house and talks about them non-stop. The routine of consuming sugars is triggered within you constantly by the numerous sensual and visual cues making it all the harder to escape from.

Jealous partners who can’t quit themselves try to make themselves feel better by dragging their other half down with them. At heart we like to share in our addictions, its part of the disease.

A non-addicted partner can also have a negative influence while trying to be positive. Maintaining standards that are too high or having an attitude that does not aid a progressive environment is common. Frustration in progress can manifest with comments like; ‘You will never quit!’ which can leads to self-fulfilling prophecy. Incredulous reactions; ‘I can’t believe your still drinking after what happened to your father!’ ‘You’ve just had a heart attack!’ We hear ‘No’ and our subconscious minds rebel.

That said being perfectly supportive often isn’t enough either – so what is the right approach truly?

The NCBI https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2851021/ report that couples therapy statistically works better than individual therapy. This does not surprise me, but it is fascinating nonetheless. From personal experience I have seen favourable results from couple’s therapy in the smoking cessation clinic I run, but why does this happen?

We are social creatures after all, so when we do things together they become more powerful experiences. The reflective period post session becomes greater due to the interactive nature of being able to share upon what transgressed. Perhaps witnessed therapy becomes sessions we cannot escape the truth of.    

The NCBI report talks about addiction being not an individual problem but a family one, where our social interactions reinforce addictive behaviours. Thus by having Behavioural Couples Therapy the problem is being targeted at its root in hope to making the lasting changes we aim for.

Online vs Face to Face Therapy

Technology has expanded to such extent that many of us now communicate and interact more through modes of technology than we do via traditional means of person to person contact.

The Smartphone and the wide availability of the internet allows us the freedom to not only talk over a phone line but also to video chat, instant text message, email and even have group meetings and company trainings wherever we are and at any time. These platforms allow people from across the globe to connect in real time and high definition for such low costs it feels free of charge and in many ways without limitations.

Is it any surprise then that we are seeing a shift in health care toward online services?

In the UK there has been a huge push toward online mental health care services. The IAPT (Improving Access to Psychological Therapies) is one clear example of this, where therapeutic services are being offered both in person as well as online to increase the number of patients that can be treated especially for low intensity conditions such as mild depression/anxiety.

In my current role as stop smoking adviser I treat patients face to face as well as through using phone clinics, text message and email services. In this format I have seen first-hand the benefits online services bring.

Many patients are unable to make a physical clinic appointment due to disability/illness or working/childcare commitments but are able to attend a telephone/text consultation. The other side of the coin is this also works for therapists in the same way, who can work from home at their convenience and can therefore offer more flexible clinic times perhaps outside regular working hours. If you live somewhere remote, or are stationed abroad and don’t speak the local language well enough – how else would you receive therapy but through online services?

Clients have reported to me that they feel very comfortable in their own home sat in their own armchair without the stress of traveling to an appointment and the awkward waiting room experience. Those with social anxiety can also readily be affected by such factors and prefer the experience of online communications.

Many of my patients openly admit to being ‘secret smokers’, and don’t like the thought of being caught out by being seen attending a smoking cessation session and therefore find online interactions more private and less intrusive. The anonymity of an online therapy may also produce more open interactions as inhibitions can be reduced, thus leading to more accurate and successful outcomes.     

I have also come across various individuals who are far more able to express themselves using the written word, where they have time and space to consider questions and responses, something that is not always possible in conversation during a given weekly time slot. With a text/email service information can be read and re-read an infinite number of times, for the patient to reply at their convenience without pressure.

Online services also opens the patient to a world of options and choices, including more affordable or even free services they would not be able to receive through attending traditional therapy.

To summarise telephone/online therapy is convenient, comfortable, unobtrusive and flexible while offering choice. It is economic also if you factor in the lack of travel costs and the logistics of a therapist potentially seeing a higher quantity of patients.

But do we lose any ingredients from traditional face to face therapy? The University of Wolverhampton UK lists some of the disadvantages.

For crisis situations where a patient is in emergency need of guidance then a physical presence is ideal, especially if a patient represents a risk to themselves or others. Severe mental health problems that require hospital staff and treatment also cannot be easily aided online. If a patient is already isolated from face to face interactions a traditional therapist is also preferential.

Online security is another factor to consider, particularly bearing in mind how often we read about identity fraud and online grooming etc. If we walk into a hospital we can feel a trust and confidence toward the professional we are speaking to; but is that the same in an online scenario? I would always encourage checks to be made and reviews to be read of any therapeutic service online or face to face. Make sure the service you are signing up to is credible.

Some individuals prefer face to face therapy. They like non-verbal, visual communication. Many, especially amongst the elder generation, do not have smart phones or the confidence in the internet and feel more comfortable using traditional means of therapy. A certain level of technological competency (and literacy when using text) is required, unless you have someone with you who might assist on your behalf.

As good as technology is, we still get bad reception at times, lines that crackle or batteries that run flat; which obviously can be frustrating and can lead to misunderstandings or even increase levels of stress that would not happen face to face.

If I currently see a patient in my clinic whose first language is not English I can use language line or visual cues to aid communication which perhaps would not be so easy over the phone/online.

I work with therapists who are adamant that traditional face to face therapies work better through the development of therapeutic rapport. Although I see their point of view, I don’t believe face to face interactions are the only way to build rapport and is more a case of personal preference. After all, don’t people make friends all over the world through communicating solely through instant messaging?

If you are someone at ease with communicating through technology and are open minded enough to try something new then I see no reason why you cannot interact exactly as effectively online as face to face, and if there is any negative difference in quality this is more than offset by all the advantages listed in this article.

All things considered I feel that if used in the right way the advantages of online therapy certainly outweigh the disadvantages. Looking to the future I believe it is a trend we are going to see a lot more of, not only in healthcare but in education, the work place and society in general. I am optimistic this can have a positive effect on global mental health trends, as the flexibility and convenience of modern techniques can enable a higher volume of patients to be treated both efficiently and effectively, with therapist and patient brought together without limitations.