Carol,* 40, was attending a parade when she spotted a few helicopters, triggering instant tears and a tightness in her chest. Helicopters were a painful reminder of the day she watched her son being transported for emergency heart surgery at 2 days old. Oh no, she remembers thinking.
Maybe the session didn’t work. The day before the parade, Carol had undergone Accelerated Resolution Therapy (ART), a type of trauma therapy that promises to heal quickly and effectively—in as little as one to five sessions. But five days later, another helicopter flew overhead while Carol was relaxing at the beach with friends.
And this time, she watched it with about as much emotional investment as she would a cloud drifting by. Carol eventually completed four ART sessions, but she says something had already shifted after the first one. Though it wasn’t immediate, in the days between the parade and the beach, Carol says ART “changed [her] reaction to the memory.” Since it was developed by Laney Rosenzweig, LMFT, in 2008, ART has drawn plenty of skepticism—but also curiosity.
Google Trends data shows that relative search interest started climbing around 2020, roughly quadrupling from its baseline a decade ago, and reaching an all-time high between 2023 and 2026. The appeal of rapid healing is easy to understand, particularly at a time when access to mental health care remains challenging for many. A recent survey found that 30 percent of U.S. adults who needed mental health care in the previous year weren’t able to get it due to costs or other barriers.
Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), trauma-focused psychotherapies with the strongest evidence typically take eight to 16 weekly sessions. Rosenzweig developed ART partly from Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy. Both therapies use eye movements during processing, but ART incorporates a distinctive technique that swaps traumatic imagery for new images of the patient’s choosing.
ART is also a proprietary therapy: Medical providers undergo specialized training before incorporating it into their practice and must sign a nondisclosure agreement, which limits what they can share about the technique. Some of these specially trained providers take insurance, while others are self-pay only. And while costs vary, out-of-pocket rates tend to range from around $175 to $400 per session.
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