EMDR - The Way to Relieve Post Traumatic Stress
Eye Movement Desensitisation Reprocessing is a new from of psychological treatment, which was based on a chance observation made by Francine Shapiro in May 1987. While walking through the park one day she noticed that some disturbing thoughts she was having suddenly disappeared. She also noticed that when she brought these thoughts back to mind, they were not as disturbing or valid as before. These thoughts were disappearing and changing without any conscious effort.
She discovered that when disturbing thoughts came into her mind, her eyes spontaneously started moving back and forth in and upward diagonal. Again the thoughts disappeared, and when she brought them back to mind, their negative charge was greatly reduced. At that moment she started making eye movements deliberately while concentrating on a variety of disturbing thoughts and memories and she found that these thoughts also disappeared and lost their charge.
A few days later she started to try it out with other people who had a wide range of non-pathological complaints and, had had varying amounts of psychotherapy. People brought up a variety of disturbing memories ranging from early child hood humiliations to present day frustrations. Then she showed them to duplicate those eye movements while simultaneously holding their problem in the mind. Most people had difficulty to continue and control their eye movements and she asked them to follow her finger.
By working with some 70 people over the course of about 6 months, She developed a standard procedure that consistently succeeded in alleviating their complaints. She called this procedure eye movement desensitisation. She treated people who fit the diagnosis of most traumatic stress disorder. She initially treated Vietnam War veterans, rape, and molestation victims and had successful results. She conducted a trial using randomly assigned treatment and control groups.
After a single session, the treatment group showed two marked changes, the anxiety levels decreased and there was a marked increase in their positive beliefs showing a strong cognitive restructuring. The treatment effect was maintained at 1 month and 3 month follow-ups. The flashbacks we totally eliminated and intrusive thoughts were fully eliminated or far fewer in number. When the intrusive thoughts did occur they were without anxiety and the negative cognitions.
The name of the treatment was changed from EMD to EMDR in 1990 and included a change in orientation from a behavioural formulation of simple desensitisation of anxiety to more integrative information processing paradigm. Accelerated information processing model was developed to explain the rapidity of clinical results. Since then there have been many more trials and many clinicians were trained. EMDR is now becoming accepted as a part of main stream psychological treatment.
References
Eye Movement Desensitisation Reprocessing Basic principles, protocols and procedures, Francine Shapiro (1995) Guildford Press
The Breakthrough Therapy For Overcoming Anxiety, Stress and Trauma, Francine Shapiro PhD, Margot Silk Forrest (1997) Basicbooks
Transforming Trauma: EMDR, L Parnell (1997) Norton
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