Coherence Training for Military Personnel

Naval Medical Center

Status: Completed

Conditions: Stress

Treatments: Behavioral: Coherence Advantage; Behavioral: Progressive Muscle Relaxation

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other U.S. Federal agency

Identifiers

NCT01599598

NMCSD.2011.0130

Details and patient eligibility

About

Military operations and training situations present many physical and psychological challenges for service members to adapt to and overcome. The challenges of these changing conditions necessitate having to cope with stress, which is seen as the negative perceptions, feelings, and emotions that manifest from the subjective physical and/or mental strain on life processes. In addition, service members are returning from deployments having gone through traumatic experiences that can develop into posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression or other serious conditions. The Surface Warfare Independent Duty Corpsman (IDC) School is an example of a training environment where some students may be entering the program with symptoms of PTSD, which may preclude or make it more difficult for them to perform well. Autonomic nervous system (ANS) dysregulation has been observed in patients with PTSD and those experiencing chronic stress, such that there is more arousing, sympathetic input to the heart than calming, parasympathetic input, which is usually the dominant division of the ANS involved in controlling one's heart rate. The IDC training program is an example of an environment where the service member is expected to excel while being subjected to multiple sources of stress. The fast tempo coupled with performance expectations may induce stress and actually inhibit learning. The Institute of HeartMath has developed the Coherence Advantage program which teaches one to self-regulate their emotions while focusing on breathing to compliment the active process of self-regulation. In conjunction, the emWave Personal Stress Reliever allows the user to receive heart rate variability (HRV) biofeedback, hence giving the user the opportunity to self-regulate their ANS through breathing and self-regulation techniques. The proposed study will test the effectiveness of the Coherence Advantage program versus progressive muscle relaxation (PMR) in reducing stress symptomatology among Surface Warfare IDC students. The effectiveness of these two different interventions will be compared on outcomes of PTSD, depression, anxiety, sleep quality, perceived stress, attrition, and class performance.

Enrollment: 192 patients

Sex: All

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Sailors
• Enrolled as students in the Surface Warfare Medicine Institute's Independent Duty Corpsman School

Exclusion criteria

• Administratively rolled over into another class
• Dropped out of the school (due to academic or medical reasons)

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Non-Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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192 participants in 2 patient groups

Progressive Muscle Relaxation

Active Comparator group

Description:

A stress intervention where subjects will learn to regulate stress based on the tensing and releasing of the major muscle groups in the body, accompanied with relaxed breathing techniques.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Progressive Muscle Relaxation

Coherence Advantage

Active Comparator group

Description:

A stress intervention where subjects will learn to regulate stress by focusing on breathing and mindfulness techniques while recognizing physiological coherence by way of a portable biofeedback device.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Coherence Advantage