Broken hearts healed with a pill - 17th February 2020

Dr Alain Brunet is a Canadian researcher who works on emotional trauma. He has started researching its effect on relationship break-ups. His research shows a way of reducing the pain of an ex-partner with a common medicine.

Dr Alain Brunet is a specialist in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). His work has supported military personnel, victims of terrorist attacks and crime for over 15 years. It utilises a common medicine, propranolol, which is widely used to treat migraine and hypertension. Findings from his latest research offer hope to patients in other areas.

The treatment, called ‘reconsolidation therapy’ works to remove the emotional pain from memories. An hour after taking the drug, the patient writes a detailed account of the traumatic event and reads it out loud.

This opens up the memory to focus on the emotional pain. Propranolol helps the patient edit the memory of the event and store this less traumatic version. After just a few sessions, around 70 per cent of patients experience reduced trauma.

Dr Brunet, joined by his colleague Dr Michelle Lonergan, have been researching the therapy’s effect on relationship trauma.

Brunet explains that the propranolol works to unlock a traumatic memory so the patient can update it and save it again. Many patients confirmed their treatment had been successful after five sessions. They felt that their trauma “could have been written by someone else” and were experiencing it “like reading a novel".

The research demonstrates a link between break-up trauma and PTSD, with some participants reporting improvement after just one session. What’s unclear, however, is if society will approve of healing relationship trauma with medicine.