Department of Mental Health offers innovative trauma treatment to LA County residents

LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- The Department of Mental Health is now offering an increasingly popular and highly sought-after treatment to Los Angeles County residents.

The technique uses your eyes to reach your brain. The process helps people alleviate distress around painful experiences. Clinical psychologists use eye movement to help people heal from emotional trauma.

"You'll follow my fingers as I wave them back and forth," said Dr. Janice Jones with the L.A. County Department of Mental Health.

It's not hypnosis. She's demonstrating a new therapy to help her clients process painful memories.

"We serve unhoused people, we serve people with mood disorders like depression and bipolar disorder. We serve people with a lot of anxiety disorders."

She says trauma can occur on many levels.

"Structural racism can also be traumatic. People in the LGBTQ community have suffered trauma on both an individual and on a societal level. So trauma can look a lot of different ways," she said.

Jones is one of 25 County psychologists trained in Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing or EMDR. Clients talk about their trauma as their eyes move across their field of vision.

"The idea of doing that is that it stimulates both sides of the brain," said Jones.

Repetitively talking about traumatic feelings while engaging in eye movement leads to the next letter, which is D for Desensitization. R stands for Reprocessing.

"And that refers to retraining the brain to process the memory in a way that changes how the memory is stored in the brain," Jones said.

Eye movement is part of the title, but what if you're visually impaired? Jones said there are other ways to stimulate both sides of the brain, including tapping their knees or putting sounds on each side of the brain.

The National Institutes of Health says dozens of studies show people experience significant symptom relief after just a few sessions. Jones said for some patients, it makes what could be a difficult treatment process less stressful.

"If we can get the client to come to treatment and stay in treatment, that's probably going to be the most effective treatment," Jones said.

Celebrities such as Miley Cyrus have spoken out about how EMDR has helped them overcome stressful experiences. In her case, she said it helped her get over stage fright.

EMDR is being offered to patients in South Los Angeles and the South Bay. You can learn more on their website or call them at 1-800-854-7771.