Assessing of autonomous nervous system activity via synchronisation of heart rate variability (HRV) to measure responses during trauma focused Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET) sessions

Violence dramatically affects human development – individually and the aggregate. Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other trauma related mental problems cause suffering and undermine the individuals’ capability to work and maintain social relations [7]. Accordingly, trauma related disorders have been associated with anger, hostility, decrease in conciliatory attitudes and an inclination to resolve conflicts more violently [8-11]. Inverse relations have also been found with social capital [12]. While claims of an overall reduction of violence in history have been reported [13], focal increases can yet be observed.

To address this need, we intend to provide evidence based psychotherapy (Narrative Exposure Therapy, NET; [14]) to survivors of trauma and violence (ukraninan students) with clinically relevant symptoms in collaboration with University of Konstanz.

During NET the patient with guidance by the therapist re-constructs and re-lives the traumatising details of his/her autobiography, while the therapist records the narration. With it, NET is oriented towards the past when treating survivors of violence, but also towards the future, as the documentation of human rights violations is relevant to communities and even societies at large.

Since one of the conditions to develop the NETfacts intervention is that the participants are submitted first to individual Narrative Exposure Therapy sessions (that are already covered by the Tverrfaglig Middler fund) we understand that it is important to collect as many data as we can to test the eficacy of the intervention.

This way, the current proposal has as goal to get funds to conduct a pre-trial to assess autonomous nervous system activity via synchronisation of heart rate variability (HRV) to measure responses during trauma focused therapy sessions (n < 50), an innovative method that assesses physiological aspects of synchrony.Increasing evidence points to synchrony as a key element for pro-social co-existence, for instance establishing rapport [15], facilitating perspective taking [16], developing adaptive emotion regulation [17], growing affiliation [5], strengthening compassion and altruistic behaviour [6], generating prosocial attitudes [18], increasing conformity [19], and fostering cooperation [4]. Regarding psychotherapeutic sessions, synchronization has been demonstrated for vocal pitch [20], movements [1, 2] and skin conductance [21], strengthening the claim of synchrony mediating the therapeutic alliance and precondition to therapy success [3].

HRV synchrony in the clinical setting is unexplored so far and presents the component of our current project proposal. HRV synchronisation during individual NET sessions, with it combine cutting edge basic research with adapting and evaluating a new intervention to tackle a growing public health challenge – violence and its consequences (Slutkin, 2017) [22]. From 2024, after the ethical approval of the proposal (developed under the Tverrfaglig Midler) and with previous results from the pre-trial that we intented to get funded through this project, we aim to continue and apply the project “FaktArt: Samfunnet ser; livsnarrativ”  for larger funds some Kavli and Forskningsrådet. It is also planed to apply to get a PhD student to go further in the studies of HRV synchronization in Narrative Exposure Therapy scenarios. We believe that, this way we enlarge the cooperation between School of Health Sciences, School of Economics, Innovation and Technology and School of Arts, Design and Media with the University of Konstanz estabeleshing an international network in the studies of trauma mitigation and consequence of expousure to violence.

The project is financed by Kristiania University College