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Record W4413971572 · doi:10.3822/ijtmb.v18i3.1233

The Effects of Massage Therapy on Medically Induced Trauma and Touch Aversion: A Case Report

2025· article· en· W4413971572 on OpenAlexvenueno aff
Melissa A. Clark, Beth Steinberg

Bibliographic record

VenueInternational Journal of Therapeutic Massage & Bodywork Research Education & Practice · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldMedicine
TopicComplementary and Alternative Medicine Studies
Canadian institutionsnot available
Fundersnot available
KeywordsTherapeutic touchMassageMedicinePsychotherapistPsychologyAlternative medicineMedical physicsIntensive care medicinePathology

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Almost 1 million US adults are diagnosed annually with post-traumatic stress disorder related to medical trauma. Individuals who experience life-threatening illness or injuries, frequent hospitalizations, and multiple invasive procedures are more likely to develop post-traumatic stress and touch aversion, making it difficult for them to relax and feel safe in healthcare settings. Psychological and somatic symptoms can complicate recovery and decrease quality of life. While massage has been shown to offer a variety of physical and psychological benefits, little is known about the benefits of massage for those diagnosed with post-traumatic stress and touch aversion related to medical trauma. A 44-year-old female was referred to massage therapy for muscle pain and generalized weakness, symptoms of a chronic degenerative illness with limited treatment options. Complicated by multiple diagnoses, her long-standing anxiety and depression had worsened, and she suffered from post-traumatic stress and touch aversion due to significant medical trauma. The patient's goals included relaxation, decreased pain and anxiety, as well as improvements in her aversion to touch when receiving necessary medical care. A wide variety of massage techniques were offered based on the patient's physical and psychological symptoms, and her receptivity to touch. Over the course of 2 years, the patient's anxiety and distress decreased as her ability to communicate her needs increased. A trauma-informed approach is essential when providing massage for those with post-traumatic stress and touch aversion from medical trauma. A pre-massage consultation and customization of the massage allowed the patient to provide consent and have control over where and how her body was touched, something that is often not possible with medical procedures. Further research is needed to determine how best to provide massage therapy to these individuals and measure outcomes related to effectiveness and symptom improvement.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.000
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.003
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Case report · Consensus signal: Case report
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.006
Threshold uncertainty score0.013

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0000.003
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0020.001
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0010.002
Bibliometrics0.0020.002
Science and technology studies0.0040.002
Scholarly communication0.0020.002
Open science0.0010.002
Research integrity0.0060.005
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0020.001

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.072
GPT teacher head0.495
Teacher spread0.423 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designCase report
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations0
Published2025
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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