Biofeedback and Neurofeedback for Veterans

 Veterans are given honor for their service in many settings.  One example I notice is when I am traveling by air.  Veterans are thanked for their service and are allowed to board before other passengers.  They are also honored on Veterans Day.  They deserve it for their sacrifice to serve our country.

Many of them pay a great price and suffer with lingering physical and mental symptoms related to their service.  Some of the symptoms that I am aware of that some veterans live with include Anxiety, PTSD, Chronic Pain, Headaches, Insomnia, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and substance dependance/abuse.

These all happen to be symptoms that biofeedback or neurofeedback can be helpful with.  Using this technology along with coaching, mindfulness, relaxation techniques and other therapies can help to reduce these symptoms.  The Veterans Administration through their VA medical centers and various branches of the military have been using biofeedback and neurofeedback for decades.  Much of this in the past, had been done by individual practitioners or small groups within these large organizations that had an interest in using these tools.  More recently, the Veterans Administration has created a Whole Health initiative which makes biofeedback, neurofeedback, and other interventions like yoga, meditation, acupuncture an official part of treatment that is offered to the veterans they serve.

Since then, I have seen more of an effort to prepare more providers within the VA system to be able to provide these services.  It has become fairly common for biofeedback to be offered for headaches, pain, anxiety, insomnia, and PTSD.  I am starting to see more of an interest in neurofeedback for insomnia, PTSD, pain, substance abuse, and TBI.  Neurofeedback requires additional training and equipment, especially to be able to provide brain mapping assessments to aid in treatment planning.

Most traditional training programs required students to be sent to a site, usually out of town, to be trained over a period of several days.  That wasn’t much of a problem when it was only one or two people to send.  Now that facilities are training groups of four to as many as 20, it becomes much more of a challenge.  New options are available now to help with this issue.  Students can attend online training.  This reduces the cost and hassle of travel for multiple students as well as having many staff members out of town at the same time.  For groups that prefer in-person training like I do, there is onsite training where the instructor comes to the facility and trains the group at their place.  This can be very efficient and it allows for the positive experience of training in person including equipment labs.

I expect that many more veterans and military service people will be getting to take advantage of these effective therapies as more providers get trained and equipped to provide these services.

Harry L. Campbell

914-762-4646 – Harry@biofeedbackinternational.com

Author of What Stress Can Do, Available on Amazon.com, Youtube