The benefits of treating PTSD with Accelerated Resolution Therapy

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By Kat Black

In a first session with a new client, Ann Therese Haydu, LCSW, knew the individual had experienced a significant traumatic event but he preferred not to share the details.

“I knew that it was trauma – that was all,” Haydu recalled. “At the end of the session, he just looked at me, shook his head, and he goes: ‘I don’t see it anymore.’”

The modality Haydu used to treat the client was Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART), a trauma therapy developed in 2008 by Laney Rosenzweig, MS, LMFT, who practices in West Hartford, Conn. Unlike other trauma therapies such as talk therapy or prolonged exposure therapy, ART does not require the patient to narrate their trauma to the therapist.  

“The biggest thing is, clients don’t have to tell you details,” said Rosenzweig, which minimizes both unnecessary retraumatizing of the client and “compassion fatigue” in the therapist. The therapy’s technique is rooted in other well-established therapeutic modalities such as Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), which Rosenzweig practiced before developing ART. EMDR therapy asks patients to focus on traumatic events while simultaneously experiencing bilateral stimulation (including eye movements, tapping, and audio) that, according to a 2017 study published in Frontiers in Psychology, “reproduce[s] the neurophysiological conditions favorable for memory integration in associative neocortex, weakening the perception of the traumatic memory, reducing its vividness, and inducing a sense of relaxation and safety.”

ART is a directive protocol designed to alleviate the symptoms of trauma in a way that is time-efficient, cost-effective, and minimally distressing to patients with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). According to The Rosenzweig Center for Rapid Recovery website, patients may experience relief from trauma symptoms in as few as one to five sessions. “I always say, why keep clients in pain any longer than you’d need to?” said Rosenzweig.  

Though predominantly a trauma-oriented therapy, ART may be used to treat a variety of conditions such as depression, anxiety, eating disorders, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), and addiction. According to a 2017 review published in Current Psychology Reports, ART was designated an evidence-based trauma therapy by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) in 2015.

Rosenzweig said that what distinguishes ART from other trauma therapies is its engagement with imagery, imagination, metaphor, and “dream language.” Through a combination of eye movements and a technique called voluntary memory replacement/voluntary image replacement (VMR/VIR), patients visualize traumatic memories or metaphors that represent them, break them down piece by piece and, with the therapist’s guidance, “rescript” them with more positive images.

Though the scientific mechanism behind ART requires further study, Rosenzweig and Haydu both said that replicating the rapid eye movement (REM) experienced in sleep is a key factor. “I’m moving my hand back and forth in front of your face, you keep your head still and you just move your eyes,” Haydu explained. “It activates two parts of your brain that are involved in REM sleep: the prefrontal cortex, which is the left logic part, and then the amygdala hippocampus area, which is the more primitive part of your brain. The eye movements also calm the body sensations that go along with the emotion or the trauma that you are dealing with.”

ART has especially shown promise with treating PTSD in war veterans. Rosenzweig said that ART is now being used on several United States army bases, including Walter Reed National Medical Military Center in Bethesda, Md., and Fort Belvoir in Fairfax County, Va. A 2013 controlled trial, published in Military Medicine, found that mean reductions in symptoms of PTSD, depression, anxiety, and trauma-related guilt were significantly greater in participants who received ART than in participants who received an attention control (AC) regimen.    

In a 2020 study, also published in Military Medicine, eight deployed U.S. soldiers experienced one 45- to 60-minute ART session within 96 hours of witnessing a traumatic death. Post-treatment, all participants reported a reduction in depressive and acute stress symptoms, which sustained for a year. A 2018 review of studies concluded that “ART appears to possess the requisite clinical, empirical, and theoretical rationale for selection as a first-line PTSD treatment modality for military personnel and veterans.”

Other studies suggesting ART’s effectiveness as a therapeutic modality for trauma were published in Frontiers in Psychology and Alternative and Complementary Therapies (Rosenzweig was one of the researchers in both studies). Research about ART is still ongoing, and since the therapy is relatively new, additional randomized controlled trials are required to provide more information about ART – particularly since, Haydu said, she often hears from her patients that it sounds “too good to be true.”    

One special function of ART, said Rosenzweig, is that it puts PTSD patients in the driver’s seat, giving them agency over their own healing. Through eye movements and visualization, she said, “You’re putting somebody in the state of having a dreamlike experience,” Rosenzweig said. But you can control that dream, and change it so the brain will accept a new definition of what you put in. That results in your sensations changing, too.”

Haydu agreed. “You’re saving yourself,” she said.