A leading psychiatrist was last week’s speaker at the meeting of the Enniskillen Rotary Club.

Dr. Art O’Malley is the Head of Clinical Services at the Ely Centre, Enniskillen, where he delivers therapeutic services.

Dr. O’Malley spoke to the Rotary Club about his methods of therapy treatments for people who have suffered mental health issues as a result of a range of complex traumas, including Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

He spoke this week to The Impartial Reporter for a discussion on his work.

Dr. O’Malley had practised as a GP and a consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist in the NHS before entering private practice in 2014.

He is the leading Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EDMR) psychiatrist for adults, children, and adolescents on the island of Ireland, and one of the leaders in the field in the UK.

He left the NHS for private practice in order to train others in his techniques.

He began his conversation with this newspaper by discussing his use of EDMR for the treatment of PTSD.

He said: “It is different to other types of therapies and is different to talking therapies like CBT which only deals with the surface issues, and the surface issues are just 10 per cent of the problem.”

Analogy

Dr. O’Malley used the analogy of the Titanic’s sinking to explain the effectiveness of different types of therapies on those who are seeking treatment for PTSD.

He said: “When people were sailing on the Titanic, they could only see the iceberg, and not the 90 per cent of the danger which was under water, [but] 90 per cent of trauma is in the body under the surface.

“You need to develop a therapeutic technique which addresses the conscious memory, but also addresses where it is stored in the body.”

Touching on some of his work, he continued: “In the past three years since I have worked in the Brook House and The Ely Centre, every single person I see is literally multiplying their trauma just by living in the North, just by hearing the news and the things they see.

“It is even worse for those in the military because instead of running away from the danger, they are running toward it, and they are trained to override their natural instinct of defence so the traditional therapeutic approaches that are developed for civilians do not work for the military.”

His work had to move online during the Covid-19 pandemic. He said: “We have found online treatment is just as effective, if not more effective, than face to face treatment.

“I have developed an app where you connect your headphones and then use self-tapping techniques such as ‘the butterfly hug’. This is a way of getting the natural rapid eye movement which is associated with dreaming.”

Dr. O’Malley and the team he has built across the UK are now striving for excellence; he and his team were invited by Dr. Kieren Mulholland to be a test programme for accreditation for the Quality Network of Veterans Mental Health Services in Northern Ireland.

When examined, they received a 98 per cent rating, and now the team are endeavouring to receive the Kitemark, awarded by the British Standards Institution, denoting the excellence of the programme.

He added: “If you have this marking every veteran will know that you are at the top of your game.”