Does EMDR work? No.
It appears that in treating symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, exposure therapy is superior to EMDR and relation training.
I have a friend who says she goes for EMDR treatments and swears they have helped her. Good for her. The benefit is better explained by the placebo effect than the EMDR technique. Here is the abstract from the April, 2003 issue of the Journal of Clinical and Consulting Psychology.
Compared with EMDR and relaxation training, exposure therapy (a) produced significantly larger reductions in avoidance and reexperiencing symptoms, (b) tended to be faster at reducing avoidance, and (c) tended to yield a greater proportion of participants who no longer met criteria for PTSD after treatment. EMDR and relaxation did not differ from one another in speed or efficacy.
You can access the abstract by clicking here.
This is article #2 in a series on Baloney warning.
Huh? So because something works better than something else, that means that the former something doesn't work?
ReplyDeleteFrom the Discussion section of the article:
"...it is noteworthy that all three treatments were associated with reductions in PTSD symptoms. These findings suggest that all three treatments were efficacious (to various degrees) in reducing PTSD."
Where do you get the information that the benefit is better explained by the placebo effect? I didn't see that in the article.
Hi antiSWer:
ReplyDeleteYou make some good points. I could used a better choice of words. I don't know of any studies that show that EMDR works better than nothing. Maybe there are, but I am not aware of them. Even if EMDR works better than nothing you would have to control for the placebo affect which is usually considered to account for a change in about 1/3 of the subjects.
The comment about the placebo affect is mine and was not in the article. I take responsibility for it.
All the best and thanks for your comment,
David Markham
Works better than nothing, or works better than TAU? I think looking at TAU (or comparison to other treatments, like in this study) is a better indicator of success, as the placebo effect can also be applied to those treatments.
ReplyDeleteAlso, placebo accounts for 1/3 of change? Is that stat applicable to all studies of therapies? I didn't realize it was so high...
Cheers!
-antiSWer
EMDR is highly researched. See the page below or do a PubMed search.
ReplyDeleteThis link has many annotated citations: http://www.emdrhap.org/emdr_info/researchandresources.php?PHPSESSID=bd98eb99ca3991e258df8ee7e2e418d4
Regards,
Bob Yourell
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