MISSOULA, Mont. – Many Montana veterans today suffer from various mental health problems including Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) which is one of the reasons why the treasure state has the highest veteran suicide rate in the country.
There is a unique treatment called for PTSD called Reconsolidation of Traumatic Memories (RTM) protocol that has a staggering success rate for treating PTSD and could be beneficial to Montana veterans.
RTM Protocol is a non-drug, non-traumatizing PTSD treatment that re-programs the neurological connection between the brain’s feeling center and specific traumatic memories. and has a 90% effective rate.
The protocol was originally used on 250 9/11 survivors and it requires three to four, 90 minute clinically led therapy sessions. The way the sessions and treatment works is the client is sat in a chair and visualizes pictures of the traumatic memory on an imagined movie screen in a variety of ways that allow the patient to disassociate themselves from the traumatic memories. RTM protocol has a 90% success rate when treating PTSD.
“If you take the movie format and you change it, you make it play in black and white, you run it backwards, or you run it very slowly. That is not neurologically allowed. You’ve altered the memory when it then goes back into long term storage in the brain. The emotional component is separated from the memory,” Dr. Frank J. Bourke, the developer of RTM Protocol explained.
In an effort to reduce Montana’s veteran suicide rate, a nonprofit in Missoula called Friends of the Veteran’s Court is pushing to bring RTM protocol to the treasure state so veterans suffering from PTSD have access to the treatment. Clinicians have to go through a specific training to be able to conduct the protocol.
“We do have a former psychiatric nurse that is a veteran, and she will be going through training in the September session for this online zoom training,”
said Lawrence Anderson, a Missoula Veterans Court Mentor and Vietnam Combat Veteran. “After she’s done with that, we hope that she will start treating the veterans in the veterans court.”
As of right now the Department of Veteran Affairs has not addressed RTM Protocol as an official treatment despite its 90% effective rate. However, Anderson is hoping the state legislature would grant a RTM study that would allow hundreds of Montana clinicians to receive protocol training and hopefully reduce the veteran suicide rate in the state.
According to Anderson the study would be last two years, and it would train up to 500 clinicians throughout Montana, so they are able to treat patients using RTM protocol.
“If we can get this implemented throughout the state, I think we will come a long way in trying to not be number one,” said Anderson when discussing lowering the veteran suicide rate.
Please click this link if you would like to learn more about RTM Protocol.
