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Psychiatrist combines traditional healing with new tech
By Sesame Campbell
CHATHAM — A revolutionary new way of treating a wide range of disorders is being used and it is happening in a quiet office in Chatham.
On the second floor of 24 Park Row, Psychiatrist Myron Harris Koch, M.D., supplements traditional psychotherapy he provides his patients with cutting-edge techniques that include neurofeedback, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) and Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT). These cutting-edge treatments are improving the lives of countless patients with issues that range from Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), anxiety and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) to Asperger syndrome, depression and dyslexia.
Although it may seem contradictory to combine traditional therapy with alternative techniques, Koch professionally disagrees. “What I’ve done is integrate the two,” he said. “My task is to get to know who a person is, get a sense of what’s troubling them and find ways to assist them for more peace of mind or better function.”
According to Kip Patterson, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist based in North Carolina, neurofeedback is a trade term for electroencephalographic (EEG) biofeedback. Patterson has been treating patients with neurofeedback and biofeedback for the past three decades and also helped train Koch in using neurofeedback techniques.
“What neurofeedback does through the miracle of modern electronics is allow us to measure the electromagnetic activity of the brain at the scalp with non-intrusive electrodes,” said Patterson. “Those electrodes act like microphones that pick up the activity of the brain, sort it out and present that information back to the patient. The patient is then able to modify the activity of their own brain based on the feedback they are given through the activity.”
Koch’s extraordinary resum/ has trained him to work with diverse patients, ranging from young children to teenagers and adults. Born in the Bronx and raised in Brooklyn and Rockland County, it appeared from an early age that Koch was destined to be a physician.
“It seemed a forgone conclusion that I would be a doctor from the time I was born,” he said. “It was my mother’s dream and I guess she chose well because I love what I do.”
While he was still in high school, Koch took a battery of psychological and aptitude tests indicating he would be best suited for social work or psychiatry. After majoring in biology as a pre-med student at Alfred University, he attended medical school at The Free University of Brussels in Belgium for medical school. Following his six years of training in Belgium, he returned to the United States for a year-long internship at Maimonides Hospital in Brooklyn. There, he trained in pediatrics, internal medicine, surgery and obstetrics and gynecology.
In 1964, Koch began a residency in pediatrics, the specialty he planned to follow. However, while he was in residency, he was drafted into the Navy, where he spent the next two years as a Navy doctor.
During those years, Koch ran the emergency room at the Navy Hospital in Charleston, SC and the pediatric clinic, where he cared for the families of Navy personnel. When he was discharged from the Navy, he completed his first full year of pediatric residency at Maimonides.
“At the time I was in my residency I was noticing that I cared more for the work I did with children and families of chronically ill children and terminally ill children,” he said. “It wasn’t that I enjoyed seeing them die, but I found I could be more useful to them and their families while assisting in that painful transition.”
As a result of that and his own personal psychotherapy, Koch changed his specialty to psychiatry and began a five-year combined residency and fellowship in psychiatry and adolescent psychiatry at Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital in New York City. There, he worked in the language research unit working with children with learning disabilities.
After Bellevue, he went to the Child Development Center at Rockland County Department of Mental Health. There, he met Dr. Margaret Lawrence, who became his mentor. It was Lawrence who taught Koch how to read a child’s behavior and how to communicate with them.
Koch recalled how Lawrence walked in one day while he was trying to quiet down a 3-year-old boy who was wrecking the office. Koch had grabbed him, but Lawrence told him to let go of the child. She knelt down, gently put her arms around the child and told Koch that the boy could feel what Koch felt toward him and was responding to that by acting out. Koch said he never forgot that.
“There is a space between the therapist and the child and she taught me how to negotiate that space,” he said. “Through that space one can approach or withdraw, or encourage the other to approach or withdraw. That space involves boundaries, knowing that space and being aware of that space. The space of a child is where the trust and safety of the future adult are constructed. She taught me that it was OK to love the child I was treating.
“I use Shakespeare with the kids, particularly ‘Hamlet’,” he said. “I might use the ‘To be or not to be’ speech for a suicidal child or Polonius’ speech in ‘Hamlet’ as a way to talk about qualities we aspire to. I have even used the balcony scene of ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ where Romeo says, ‘What light through yonder window breaks?’ Kids just love that!”
Koch has worked in several hospitals in New York City and Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS) facilities in New York state. At Brookwood Center for Boys, an OCFS maximum security facility, he has worked with some of New York’s most troubled youth.
“What I help them to do is see the strengths and abilities they have within and to try to normalize them,” he said. “They think they are crazy and are afraid to say so. These kids are pretty sharp and I care for these kids. Most have had a lousy rap; some bad parenting and others trauma. They haven’t been able to trust, have not been trustworthy. I teach them how to safely connect with their emotions, how to handle the intensity of their emotions and to realize that their emotions are there to communicate with them and to tell them important things about themselves.”
He does this through a phase treatment, which consists first of getting to know patients, establishing trust with them and beginning to teach them the language of how to talk about their feelings. In phase two, patients learn to focus their attention on body sensations.
“What happens when you are triggered is that the limbic system goes berserk and shuts itself off from the pre-frontal cortex part of the brain that allows for clear thinking,” said Koch. “Really what happens is that stuff from the past is controlling your will. You can’t think and you go on automatic pilot. The techniques that I use teach people to locate the stress and bring those stress levels down so that they are able to balance the affect of their own observations and realize that they have control over their emotions. They learn how to differentiate between what they are thinking, doing and feeling.”
In the treatment of children and adults, Koch has discovered that it is possible to use neurofeedback to successfully treat issues that were historically treated through a combination of medication and psychotherapy. He uses neurofeedback in his private practice, but not yet at OCFS facilities.
Here’s how it works. The brain emits energy in certain frequencies at different amplifications. Different frequencies carry different information and those frequencies influence each other. Using a neurofeedback machine, Koch attaches electrodes to the scalp of a patient. Depending on the placement of the electrodes, frequencies of the patient’s brain are picked up and monitored through a computer program, also called a protocol.
The protocol monitors the electrical activity produced by the patient’s brain and correlates this activity with the patient’s behavior. Koch then “feeds-back” information to the patient on his or her level of consciousness at any given moment. Using the neurofeedback equipment, patients learn to train voluntary control and use this information on their own to relax, concentrate better or feel calmer and more focused.
“Studies show that students show fewer and fewer symptoms of ADHD, employees can become more efficient on the job and people who suffer migraines can dramatically reduce the frequency, duration and intensity of their headaches,” Koch said. “These are only some of the benefits from neurofeedback.”
On the second floor of 24 Park Row, Psychiatrist Myron Harris Koch, M.D., supplements traditional psychotherapy he provides his patients with cutting-edge techniques that include neurofeedback, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) and Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT). These cutting-edge treatments are improving the lives of countless patients with issues that range from Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), anxiety and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) to Asperger syndrome, depression and dyslexia.
Although it may seem contradictory to combine traditional therapy with alternative techniques, Koch professionally disagrees. “What I’ve done is integrate the two,” he said. “My task is to get to know who a person is, get a sense of what’s troubling them and find ways to assist them for more peace of mind or better function.”
According to Kip Patterson, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist based in North Carolina, neurofeedback is a trade term for electroencephalographic (EEG) biofeedback. Patterson has been treating patients with neurofeedback and biofeedback for the past three decades and also helped train Koch in using neurofeedback techniques.
“What neurofeedback does through the miracle of modern electronics is allow us to measure the electromagnetic activity of the brain at the scalp with non-intrusive electrodes,” said Patterson. “Those electrodes act like microphones that pick up the activity of the brain, sort it out and present that information back to the patient. The patient is then able to modify the activity of their own brain based on the feedback they are given through the activity.”
Koch’s extraordinary resum/ has trained him to work with diverse patients, ranging from young children to teenagers and adults. Born in the Bronx and raised in Brooklyn and Rockland County, it appeared from an early age that Koch was destined to be a physician.
“It seemed a forgone conclusion that I would be a doctor from the time I was born,” he said. “It was my mother’s dream and I guess she chose well because I love what I do.”
While he was still in high school, Koch took a battery of psychological and aptitude tests indicating he would be best suited for social work or psychiatry. After majoring in biology as a pre-med student at Alfred University, he attended medical school at The Free University of Brussels in Belgium for medical school. Following his six years of training in Belgium, he returned to the United States for a year-long internship at Maimonides Hospital in Brooklyn. There, he trained in pediatrics, internal medicine, surgery and obstetrics and gynecology.
In 1964, Koch began a residency in pediatrics, the specialty he planned to follow. However, while he was in residency, he was drafted into the Navy, where he spent the next two years as a Navy doctor.
During those years, Koch ran the emergency room at the Navy Hospital in Charleston, SC and the pediatric clinic, where he cared for the families of Navy personnel. When he was discharged from the Navy, he completed his first full year of pediatric residency at Maimonides.
“At the time I was in my residency I was noticing that I cared more for the work I did with children and families of chronically ill children and terminally ill children,” he said. “It wasn’t that I enjoyed seeing them die, but I found I could be more useful to them and their families while assisting in that painful transition.”
As a result of that and his own personal psychotherapy, Koch changed his specialty to psychiatry and began a five-year combined residency and fellowship in psychiatry and adolescent psychiatry at Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital in New York City. There, he worked in the language research unit working with children with learning disabilities.
After Bellevue, he went to the Child Development Center at Rockland County Department of Mental Health. There, he met Dr. Margaret Lawrence, who became his mentor. It was Lawrence who taught Koch how to read a child’s behavior and how to communicate with them.
Koch recalled how Lawrence walked in one day while he was trying to quiet down a 3-year-old boy who was wrecking the office. Koch had grabbed him, but Lawrence told him to let go of the child. She knelt down, gently put her arms around the child and told Koch that the boy could feel what Koch felt toward him and was responding to that by acting out. Koch said he never forgot that.
“There is a space between the therapist and the child and she taught me how to negotiate that space,” he said. “Through that space one can approach or withdraw, or encourage the other to approach or withdraw. That space involves boundaries, knowing that space and being aware of that space. The space of a child is where the trust and safety of the future adult are constructed. She taught me that it was OK to love the child I was treating.
“I use Shakespeare with the kids, particularly ‘Hamlet’,” he said. “I might use the ‘To be or not to be’ speech for a suicidal child or Polonius’ speech in ‘Hamlet’ as a way to talk about qualities we aspire to. I have even used the balcony scene of ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ where Romeo says, ‘What light through yonder window breaks?’ Kids just love that!”
Koch has worked in several hospitals in New York City and Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS) facilities in New York state. At Brookwood Center for Boys, an OCFS maximum security facility, he has worked with some of New York’s most troubled youth.
“What I help them to do is see the strengths and abilities they have within and to try to normalize them,” he said. “They think they are crazy and are afraid to say so. These kids are pretty sharp and I care for these kids. Most have had a lousy rap; some bad parenting and others trauma. They haven’t been able to trust, have not been trustworthy. I teach them how to safely connect with their emotions, how to handle the intensity of their emotions and to realize that their emotions are there to communicate with them and to tell them important things about themselves.”
He does this through a phase treatment, which consists first of getting to know patients, establishing trust with them and beginning to teach them the language of how to talk about their feelings. In phase two, patients learn to focus their attention on body sensations.
“What happens when you are triggered is that the limbic system goes berserk and shuts itself off from the pre-frontal cortex part of the brain that allows for clear thinking,” said Koch. “Really what happens is that stuff from the past is controlling your will. You can’t think and you go on automatic pilot. The techniques that I use teach people to locate the stress and bring those stress levels down so that they are able to balance the affect of their own observations and realize that they have control over their emotions. They learn how to differentiate between what they are thinking, doing and feeling.”
In the treatment of children and adults, Koch has discovered that it is possible to use neurofeedback to successfully treat issues that were historically treated through a combination of medication and psychotherapy. He uses neurofeedback in his private practice, but not yet at OCFS facilities.
Here’s how it works. The brain emits energy in certain frequencies at different amplifications. Different frequencies carry different information and those frequencies influence each other. Using a neurofeedback machine, Koch attaches electrodes to the scalp of a patient. Depending on the placement of the electrodes, frequencies of the patient’s brain are picked up and monitored through a computer program, also called a protocol.
The protocol monitors the electrical activity produced by the patient’s brain and correlates this activity with the patient’s behavior. Koch then “feeds-back” information to the patient on his or her level of consciousness at any given moment. Using the neurofeedback equipment, patients learn to train voluntary control and use this information on their own to relax, concentrate better or feel calmer and more focused.
“Studies show that students show fewer and fewer symptoms of ADHD, employees can become more efficient on the job and people who suffer migraines can dramatically reduce the frequency, duration and intensity of their headaches,” Koch said. “These are only some of the benefits from neurofeedback.”
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