www.sltrib.com/news/ci_9944793 -
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Published on: 7/21/2008
Last Visited: 7/21/2008
The neurofeedback business, which is raking in about ,1 billion a year according to Siegfried Othmer, chief scientist of The EEG Institute in Woodland Hills, Calif., is still "going through its Wild West phase."
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It's a field that has been largely unregulated and developed by people not licensed in psych or neuro fields, explained Othmer, who has been dedicated to neurofeedback work - training others and devising equipment - for more than 20 years.
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There will come a time, Othmer predicted, when insurance companies will cover neurofeedback treatments and drug companies, which have made a fortune on anti-depressants, may run scared. Licensed therapists, he added, need not worry about job security.The professionals, he said, simply need to get on board and "be better than everyone else."As neurofeedback goes mainstream, he said demand for professionals - with insurance-covered services - will boom.
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Around for about 40 years, biofeedback gained popularity in the late 1960s as a way to reach "altered states" and "enter your own domain of spirituality," said Siegfried Othmer, chief scientist of The EEG Institute."It was a way to have the LSD experience without the LSD," he said.And it was summarily written off as "too weird" and considered "fool's gold" by university psychologists, he explained.So it was the professionals who let biofeedback fall out of their grasp, he added.All these years later, now that they're discovering "it's real gold," he said they want it back, they want to own it, which is why there's a brewing struggle over who has the right to dole out neurotherapy.
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