We watched a powerful TED Talk titled, "How childhood trauma affects health across a lifetime." Dr. Nadine Burke discusses how "exposure to trauma during childhood can dramatically increase people’s risk for 7 out of 10 of the leading causes of death in the U.S.—including high blood pressure, heart disease, and cancer—and it’s crucial to address this public health crisis." Take a few minutes and watch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95ovIJ3dsNkSo how does trauma impact us over time? Mental Health WomensHealth.gov states that, "Experiencing abuse or other trauma puts people at risk of developi ..read more

For a field that seems very recent, its origins go back 70 years. Then, Barry Sterman, a young researcher at UCLA wanted to find out whether he could train an animal to control its brainwaves using a method known as operation conditioning. As you may remember from Psychology 101, operant conditioning happens when you give a reward after a behavior happens (and make sure not to give a reward when it doesn’t happen). And to complicate matters, Sterman worked with cats, which as subjects, are probably much less cooperative than dogs. In any case, Sterman chose to focus on a brainwave called a “se ..read more

The Neurofeedback Advocacy Project's Executive Director, Matthew J. Fleischman, PhD, recently authored an article titled, "Documenting the Impact of Infra Low Frequency Neurofeedback on Underserved Populations With Complex Clinical Presentations." Abstract: There is a crisis in mental health. The demand for services is huge; the efficacy of current services is lacking, and the traditional path to developing effective treatments is not working. This paper describes an approach based on implementing infra low frequency (ILF) neurofeedback in agencies that work with the underserved and collectin ..read more

The testimonial shown below, addressed to Dr. Matt Fleischman, Director of the Neurofeedback Advocacy Project (“NAP”), comes from the Director of a participant in the NAP, Prudence Tippins, MS CFT, Mental Health Therapist, Sponsors, Inc., Eugene, Oregon as she prepares to move to a new career opportunity in Wisconsin. I think you will agree that the experience of her program with neurofeedback is the kind of experience you would like to experience in your organization. Participation on our expanding NAP program of trainings in the Northwest would empower your providers to achieve similar outco ..read more

In her 2019 book The Angel and the Assassin – the Tiny Brain Cell that Changed the Course of Medicine, Donna Jackson Nakazawa writes, “In 2013 (the latest year for which we have numbers), The United States spent $201 billion on treating mental illness – more than any other disease, including cancer, heart conditions, and diabetes. Most of this burden falls on families – precisely because we have decided that these disorders are not physical and therefore don’t need to be covered by “medical” care....Yet even as American families spent more on mental illness than on other diseases, the United S ..read more

This year, I had the opportunity to join Dr. Roxana Sasu for the MindStories podcast with Dr. Josephine McNary, hosted by CalPsychiatry. We discuss the basics of neurofeedback, how it can help clients, and how to use this powerful tool as an approach to integrative health. View the video and presenter bios on the CalPsychiatry website. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gn-NyjabVZQ Want to learn more? View our page on ILF neurofeedback ..read more

Who knew? Part of the Neurofeedback Advocacy Project is a biweekly online meeting with supervisors and agency heads. In a recent meeting we discussed, “What is your greatest challenge?” I expected to hear common concerns like, “funding,” “long waiting lists for services,” or “dealing with Covid.” Instead, they all mentioned staff retention and recruitment. Again, who knew? Each person said that too many staff were leaving and how difficult it was to recruit new clinicians, and the reasons were similar. Working with a mainly Medicaid population and/or typically hard-to-serve or underserved popu ..read more

In her 2019 book The Angel and the Assassin – the Tiny Brain Cell that Changed the Course of Medicine, Donna Jackson Nakazawa writes, “In 2013 (the latest year for which we have numbers), The United States spent $201 billion on treating mental illness – more than any other disease, including cancer, heart conditions, and diabetes. Most of this burden falls on families – precisely because we have decided that these disorders are not physical and therefore don’t need to be covered by “medical” care....Yet even as American families spent more on mental illness than on other diseases, the United S ..read more

What if there were a way of reducing symptoms of depression, anxiety, trauma, and attention problems other than talk therapy, behavioral interventions or medication? How many of you feel like you know what you need to do to feel better but your brain has a mind of its own? How many have tried talk therapy and feel like it was good but maybe didn’t quite do the trick or missed the mark somehow? How many of you would like to improve your mental health without having to dredge through your painful past or navigate the negative side effects of meds? How many have tried medications and didn’t like ..read more

While Covid has slowed everyone in mental healthcare, it has not slowed the Neurofeedback Advocacy Project (NAP), which since its founding in 2018, continues to expand and improve its offering. We have added participating agencies beyond Oregon to include California, Utah, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Arizona and have several more in the pipeline. Our website has a clinical results tab that is updated daily, documenting the efficacy of this modality with high ACE score Medicaid-eligible clients. There is also a cost benefit tab showing the favorable financial impact to agencies of bringing ILF neur ..read more