How Effective Is EMDR Therapy For PTSD

By Jody Leach


Several people have experienced traumas in different ways. They may have been assaulted and abused physically by other individuals. They may also have encountered a very tragic accident, like a car accident or a plane crash. They may have lost someone they love who died due to sickness or other causes. They may also have went to war and have combat experiences.

For this, a post traumatic stress disorder or PTSD may be developed in an individual. For this, an eye movement desensitization and reprocessing or EMDR therapy for PTSD has been used. This is one of the ways in treating the said disorder. An individual will need to know several things about this therapy to help keep him informed about it.

A certain individual who is traumatized by an event may display some major changes in his behavior. He may be irritated even with slightest movements. Sleeping at night time can be hard for them. In a given period of time, he might get nightmares or flashbacks of those events that happened to him. He might find it difficult as well in concentrating on a distinct task which he is assigned to do.

There are eight phases involved in this therapy. In the first one, a therapist assesses the experiences which brought stress to the patient. They would talk about the things that the patient wants to forget. They would also talk about the goals that both the practitioner and the patient want to achieve at the end of this treatment.

During the second stage, those stressful events will be talked about. Reliving the moments and narrating them to the professional will have to be done by the patient. However, his emotional stability should be ensured first. The doctor can make use of a few relaxation techniques to ensure his emotional stability so that they can proceed.

In phases three to six, the images, beliefs, sensations, and emotions which are related to the events will be discussed. The clients will have to talk about them while they follow the movement of the finger of the practitioners with their eyes, back and forth. This activity needs to be repeated until the patients are not stressed anymore while they are discussing the events.

In the seventh phase, the client needs to write down anything about the stressful experience. In the last one, changes in the behavior of the patient will be evaluated. This is usually done in the last day of the treatment.

The effectiveness of this method has been the subject of several researches and studies done by several medical groups. There are studies which prove that this method is really effective when treating traumatized patients. However, there are also studies which would say that it does not have superiority over other therapies being administered to traumatized people.

Some individuals have attested to this is useful to them. However, it is not clear yet whether this really is the most effective or not. The most important is that this method is created with the purpose of helping traumatized persons let go of these painful events and live their lives happily.




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