Neuroscience
It involves recalling your horrific experience and then following your therapist’s moving finger with your eyes, which may sound a bit wacky, but as a treatment for post-traumatic stress, eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing therapy (EMDR) is endorsed by National Institute for Clinical Excellence guidelines. However, the treatment continues to attract controversy, not least because it’s unclear how it works. But now Christopher Lee and colleagues report that EMDR’s critical ingredient is that it allows traumatised people to relive their trauma ‘at a distance’, as a detached observer.
Lee’s team followed 44 traumatised patients – some were car crash survivors, others had been sexually assaulted – through their first session of EMDR. Those patients whose statements during therapy suggested they were recalling their trauma at a distance (e.g. “The faces seem all blurred”; “It doesn’t seem so real”) showed the most improvement in their symptoms a week later. By contrast, there was no association between the number of statements made by patients that related to reliving the trauma first hand (e.g. “I am in the ambulance”; “I see her crawling away from me”) and their improvement a week later.
The researchers said this undermines the notion that EMDR works like traditional exposure therapy, in which patients are encouraged to relive their trauma first hand. “A distancing process…was associated with more improvement than when participants relived the trauma experiences” they said.
Although critics of EMDR have doubted the importance of the eye movement aspect of the therapy, Lee’s team concluded “The distancing may be partly facilitated by the distraction of the eye movement task…[or] facilitated by the therapist encouraging a dual focus of attention, that is, simultaneously being aware of the trauma material and of being in the therapist’s office”.
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Lee, C.W., Taylor, G. & Drummond, P.D. (2006). The active ingredient in EMDR: Is it traditional exposure or dual focus of attention? Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, 13, 97-107.
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
Articles in The Psychologist magazine for and against EMDR.
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Neuroscience
Why eye movement therapy works
It involves recalling your horrific experience and then following your therapist’s moving finger with your eyes, which may sound a bit wacky, but as a treatment for post-traumatic stress, eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing therapy (EMDR) is endorsed by National Institute for Clinical Excellence guidelines. However, the treatment continues to attract controversy, not least because it’s unclear how it works. But now Christopher Lee and colleagues report that EMDR’s critical ingredient is that it allows traumatised people to relive their trauma ‘at a distance’, as a detached observer.Lee’s team followed 44 traumatised patients – some were car crash survivors, others had been sexually assaulted – through their first session of EMDR. Those patients whose statements during therapy suggested they were recalling their trauma at a distance (e.g. “The faces seem all blurred”; “It doesn’t seem so real”) showed the most improvement in their symptoms a week later. By contrast, there was no association between the number of statements made by patients that related to reliving the trauma first hand (e.g. “I am in the ambulance”; “I see her crawling away from me”) and their improvement a week later.
The researchers said this undermines the notion that EMDR works like traditional exposure therapy, in which patients are encouraged to relive their trauma first hand. “A distancing process…was associated with more improvement than when participants relived the trauma experiences” they said.
Although critics of EMDR have doubted the importance of the eye movement aspect of the therapy, Lee’s team concluded “The distancing may be partly facilitated by the distraction of the eye movement task…[or] facilitated by the therapist encouraging a dual focus of attention, that is, simultaneously being aware of the trauma material and of being in the therapist’s office”.
__________________________________
Lee, C.W., Taylor, G. & Drummond, P.D. (2006). The active ingredient in EMDR: Is it traditional exposure or dual focus of attention? Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, 13, 97-107.
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
Articles in The Psychologist magazine for and against EMDR.
- Computer Game Could Help Prevent Traumatic Flashbacks
The idea of fire-fighters, rape victims and car crash survivors being led away from their trauma to play the jigsaw-style video-game Tetris is surreal, but could soon become a reality. That's because Emily Holmes and colleagues have shown that playing...
- Body Psychotherapy For Hard-to-treat Schizophrenia
We all know about the hallucinations and delusions, but it’s actually schizophrenia’s so-called ‘negative symptoms’ – the emotional withdrawal, slowing of movement, and lack of responsiveness – that are the most difficult to treat. Now a new...
- Is It Really True That Therapists Don't Improve With Experience?
When choosing a therapist, you’d be forgiven for wanting someone with plenty of experience. But then you might well be unaware of all the studies that, to psychotherapy’s embarrassment, have failed to find any association between therapist experience...
- Cognitive Therapy On The Couch
Cognitive therapy for depression could be improved by the therapist focusing more on the therapeutic process itself. That’s according to Jonathan Kanter (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) and colleagues who compared the effectiveness of therapy given...
- Childhood Trauma And Schizophrenia
A series of articles in the November issue of Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica explores the link between trauma and schizophrenia. "Earlier trauma plays a causal role in schizophrenia, it’s argued, because it can leave people prone to finding...psychotic...