The Effects of Integrated Psychotherapy in Patients who have experienced Trauma: a Pre-Post Design during the Covid-19 Health Emergency

Abstract

Background : A pandemic from a bio-psycho-social perspective represents for many people both a traumatic event and a risk factor for the onset of traumatic responses. These light up in the present but in reality, they represent the activation of peritraumatic networks dating back to the past to which the person can react both by the appearance of symptomatic pictures and the disintegration of the self into dissociated parts. Starting from this reading of trauma, Integrative Psychotherapy sets itself the challenge of accompanying people in an integrative work of the parts of the self by combining the emotional, somatic, and cognitive levels. Methods: The subjects were 31 patients, 15 of the control group and 16 of the experimental group. An online survey collected information on demographic data. Furthermore, anxiety, depression, and insomnia symptoms were assessed in pre and post-tests. The experimental group continued Integrative Psychotherapy during the health emergency. To analyze data, descriptive statistics, paired and independent two-sample t-tests were used. Results: The results indicated that there was a significant difference between the experimental group (patients that continued Integrative Psychotherapy sessions during the health emergency) and control group (patients that stopped therapy). Conclusions: The best performance of the experimental group shows the impact that Integrative Psychotherapy sessions have had in dealing with, managing, and overcoming the crises that patients were experiencing during the health emergency.