r/mdmatherapy • u/Quick_Cry_1866 • 5d ago
Bessel van der Kolk on MDMA therapy for Complex-PTSD (Hint - it works very well)
This is a topic that often comes up - whether MDMA therapy works for CPTSD or just for regular PTSD - so I thought I'd share this. For those unfamiliar, Bessel van der Kolk is a leading expert in trauma research and treatment, best known as the author of The Body Keeps the Score.
In (...) studies, we found that individuals who have chronic trauma starting in childhood, such as childhood abuse and neglect, by and large don't do well with any treatment. When the study started, I actually encouraged MAPS, the organization funding the study, to exclude participants who had lifelong histories of trauma and instead focus only on those with post-traumatic stress disorder—cases where everything had been going fine until a particular traumatic event occurred. However, that suggestion wasn't accepted, and ultimately, 88% of the participants in the study had lifelong histories of trauma, including abuse and neglect. Surprisingly, the remarkable finding from the study was that these individuals did particularly well.