SMART treatment does not rely on language and awareness as an entry point, engages the sensory motor systems, especially the vestibular, proprioceptive and tactile sensory systems for emotional, psychological, and relational regulation and repair, follows the child’s lead while tending to safety, uses full body participatory play with the child, to work with the unfolding process in real time in session as the path to developing new skills and processing traumatic experience.
SMART is:
- Sensory Motor Arousal Regulation Treatment
- an innovative mental health therapy for complexly traumatized children and adolescents for whom regulation of emotional, behavioral and interpersonal life is a primary problem.
- SMART was created by 4 seasoned clinicians who met over 10 years ago at the Trauma Center in Boston founded by Bessel van der Kolk, M.D. Drawn together to find effective treatments for child clients, they created SMART, a unique full-body multi-sensory approach.
More importantly, there is peer reviewed scientific research to support the value of the SMART intervention model in reducing symptoms in complex trauma patients. More research will surely follow, below is the findings and attached is the article in its entirety.
“The study provides preliminary support for the potential effectiveness of the SMART intervention model in reducing internalizing symptoms associated with complex trauma in youth. Study results suggest the particular utility of SMART in addressing somatic problems and symptoms of anxious and depressed mood in this vulnerable subpopulation of child trauma survivors, as well as the potential to contribute to the amelioration of hyperarousal symptoms associated with PTSD in these youth. These findings are consistent with the model’s underlying theory of change and intentional focus on somatic regulation and the cardinal problem of overarousal for both PTSD and complex trauma.”