I posted earlier that we were going to check this out, here is what I found out, $600.00 later and we are probably going to be getting some more bills too:
I want to let any other readers know, this is not science. I recently had the experience of being referred to a therapist where I live who is all about using EEG to treat everything under the sun, including Aspergers. The psychiatrist who referred me had NO idea that was what this therapist was into.
The psychiatrist did some research and could only find two studies on this, neither were conclusive. He apologized and said he had no idea she was so gung ho about this approach and he told me this (using EEGs to diagnose and neurofeedback therapy) is way outside main stream medicine and not recognized by the psychiatric community.
My son's assessment of this therapist on his first meeting with her? "She just wants to sell us stuff."...he has now decided he doesn't like her and no we will not being paying thousands of dollars for neurofeedback sessions that are unproven and offering fake hope to people who want help with their social issues.
If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is, posted below is a quote from a website that debunks fad treatments:
Quote:
Hello, I'm Andrew from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in Minnesota, and I would like to know if neurotherapy using EEG Biofeedback is an effective treatment?
Usually marketed as neurofeedback, this is an alternative therapy that claims to treat a huge range of conditions through the use of EEG biofeedback. You've probably seen TV shows where people, often with some paralysis or other handicap, practice moving a cursor on a computer screen using only electrodes attached to their scalp. You can indeed train your brain to do this kind of thing, and based on this apparent legitimacy, a whole cottage industry has grown around the sales and marketing of such machines, and expensive training for alternative practitioners to learn how to use them.
What's lacking is evidence of efficacy, or plausible foundation for how or why this might treat medical conditions. Practitioners can be found who claim it treats just about anything: autism, ADHD, incontinence, migraines, chronic pain, depression, drug abuse, sleep disorders, you name it. These disorders all have different underlying causes, so it's implausible to expect a single treatment to target more than one of them, let alone all of them.
The theory, as it's offered, is based on the premise that there are healthy brainwaves and unhealthy brainwaves. What you do is put on the electrodes and practice with whatever's on the screen, usually some type of simple video game, until the practitioner declares your EEG to look "healthier". The idea is that you come back again and again, practicing to reach the "healthy" EEG sooner; and it's claimed that this trains your brain to normally reach an improved state on its own. All of this sounds perfectly reasonable, and impressively high-tech, which is why the treatment is so easy to sell to uninformed patients.
Dramatic conditions like epileptic seizures and brain injuries can indeed have obvious readings on an EEG, but healthy brains also have a wide range of possible EEG waveforms. The notion that some healthy EEG waves are "good" and some are "bad" is without any neurological foundation, and thus, so is neurofeedback. "Bad" EEGs are neither characteristic of, nor the cause of, the conditions neurofeedback pretends to treat, so save your money.
From:
Skeptoid.com
27 Oct 2011, 1:47 pm
this is a major issue, she has anxiety and refuses to do things. I think they look at 3 brain waves. Will find out more when we go back.
