There were 1,689 press releases posted in the last 24 hours and 413,925 in the last 365 days.

Trauma Healing for Health Care Workers: Psychological Support and Self-Care from the nonprofit Center for Mind-Body Medicine

James S. Gordon, MD, and his faculty provide trauma healing to frontline health care workers

Washington, DC, May 05, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- James S. Gordon, MD, the world’s authority on healing population-wide trauma, and his nonprofit Center for Mind-Body Medicine, have launched a program of psychological support and self-care for health care workers on the frontlines of the Covid-19 pandemic. 

This timely initiative provides step-by-step psychological trauma-healing using the same evidence-based approach Dr. Gordon and The Center for Mind-Body Medicine have introduced at crisis points around the world—and now makes the program available immediately in an online platform.

The small eight-week-long groups, taught in real-time, meet weekly for two-hour sessions. Instructors include Dr. Gordon himself and The Center's 140-person international faculty. Some 50 groups have already begun meeting, and 100 more will be up and running within the month. Participants are from 49 states and 19 countries.

Participants learn practical, evidence-based self-care tools — various forms of non-denominational meditation, guided imagery, nutrition, and self-expression. Each group is limited to 10 participants. As they share their experience of the techniques, the communal bonds that develop among the health care workers accelerates the healing process. The program is free, although donations are accepted. 

Dr. Gordon, CMBM Founder and Executive Director, a clinical professor of Psychiatry and Family Medicine at Georgetown Medical School, was Chair of the White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy. A Harvard-educated psychiatrist, he is the lead author of the first-ever randomized controlled trial of any intervention with war-traumatized children. The study, which was published in The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, showed a greater than 85 percent decrease in symptoms of PTSD in high school students who participated for 11 weeks in a small group in which they learned the approach that Dr. Gordon describes in The Transformation: Discovering Wholeness and Healing After Trauma (HarperOne) and that is offered in CMBM’s current online Mind-Body Skills Groups for health care workers. Subsequent studies have confirmed these results. 

Dr. Gordon has long served as the “doctor on call” when psychological trauma strikes. He and his CMBM faculty work with government and non-government partners here in the US, and overseas, to implement successful, large-scale programs to treat and prevent psychological trauma: with conflict-affected populations in the Balkans and the Middle East; in four Central Asia Republics at the request of the United States Institute of Peace; and with communities and countries devastated by natural and climate-related disasters in Haiti, Southern Louisiana, Houston, Northern California and Puerto Rico.

CMBM runs programs in the US that help to heal communities ravaged by the opioid epidemic and with indigenous tribes in South Dakota and elsewhere suffering from poverty and historic trauma. CMBM has programs at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, throughout Broward County, and at other school shooting sites. The Center also works with active duty US military and their families and is implementing a pilot project serving more than 1.5 million US Veterans across the Southeastern United States in an ongoing partnership with VISN-8, Veterans Integrated Service Network, the largest division of the Veteran’s Health Administration.

Dr. Gordon notes, “the pandemic has generated unprecedented levels of trauma and stress for the medical community and for our entire population. The good news,” he continues, “is that all of us, regardless of age or education, can use the tools of self-awareness, self-care, and social support  to heal the trauma and stress of the coronavirus pandemic.”

### 

About James S. Gordon, MD

Hailed as a "pioneer in integrative medicine" by Deepak Chopra, MD, and "amazing" by Nobel Peace laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, James S. Gordon, MD, founded The Center for Mind-Body Medicine in 1991. He has edited or authored 10 books and over 140 articles in professional journals as well as in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and The Atlantic. He has served as an expert for 60 Minutes, CNN, NPR, and other news organizations. Andrew Weil, MD, has said of Dr. Gordon's most recent book, The Transformation, "This is the book on integrative trauma treatment I've been waiting for."



About The Center for Mind-Body Medicine

The Center for Mind-Body Medicine, the world’s leader in successfully addressing population-wide psychological trauma, was founded in 1991 by James S. Gordon, MD, a former National Institute of Mental Health researcher.

Providing innovative solutions to some of the world’s most intractable and complex psychological and social problems, The Center for Mind-Body Medicine’s international faculty of 140 has worked with communities in over a dozen nations as well as here in the United States, training health professionals, educators, community leaders, and youth peer counselors,  who in turn integrate the CMBM model into their work with millions of children and adults. 

CMBM, a nonprofit based in Washington, DC, has successfully worked with population-wide trauma in communities challenged by war, poverty, mass shootings, climate-related disasters, opioid addiction, and genocide. In response to the unprecedented psychological trauma of the Covid-19 pandemic, CMBM  most recently launched an innovative online program of self-care and social support for healthcare workers and those afflicted by Covid-19 that is designed to heal psychological trauma, strengthen resilience as well as relieve the symptoms of stress. For more information, please visit: https://cmbm.org/onlinegroup/

Mary-Elizabeth Gifford
The Center for Mind-Body Medicine
202-244-330
mgifford@cmbm.org