The preliminary efficacy and clinical applicability of Brainspotting among Filipino women with severe posttraumatic stress disorder

Abstract

Introduction: Brainspotting (BSP) is a relatively new neurophysiological-based approach to PTSD treatment that recognizes the relevance and correlation of eye position to neurological and emotional experience. This paper aims to examine the efficacy of BSP in ameliorating severe PTSD symptoms among female residential patients across three-time points. Methods: This study employed a one-group pretest-posttest with delayed posttest quasi-experimental design to establish and determine causal change among different conditions. Different versions of gold-standard measures were administered to individuals with trauma exposure; the Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale 5 (CAPS-5) and the Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Checklist 5 (PCL-5). The sample comprised 13 participants at the Marillac Hills Alabang who incurred severe interpersonal trauma and suffered markedly elevated PTSD symptoms for at least two years. They received three sessions of BSP guided by a therapist's manual and were assessed at three-time points - pretreatment, posttreatment, and two weeks after the treatment completion. Primary data include self-report posttraumatic stress symptoms, which were analyzed using repeated- measures ANOVA with a Greenhouse-Geisser correction and post-hoc test with a Bonferroni correction. Results: Results showed significant improvements in both measures with large effect sizes from 0.859 to 0.979. Conclusion: At α0.01 (99%) confidence interval, the results suggest that BSP has significant efficacy in decreasing posttraumatic stress symptoms. After the three BSP sessions, all participants were assessed with absent to mild PTSD symptoms. The effects of the treatment persisted during the short-term follow-up evaluation.