EMDR Therapy For PTSD And Its Effectiveness

By Jody Leach


Some people have encountered several experiences which cause them to be traumatized. There are some who have undergone assault by other individuals and have been abused physically. Tragic accidents may also be causes like when the plane they are in crashes or accidents on the road. Loved ones who died due to illness or other reasons can cause trauma as well. The soldiers who are sent to war will 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.

This therapy is divided into eight phases. In phase one, the therapists will make assessments about the stressful experiences of the patients. The patients may want to forget these things and they will have to talk about it to the professionals. In this session, as well, goals will be set which they want to obtain at the completion of this therapy.

In the second phase, they will be talking of the stressful experiences that occurred. The patient may have to relive the moments and narrate what happened to the medical professional. However, the patient should be emotionally stable to be able to continue in this undertaking. The professional may use several relaxation methods to ensure that he is emotionally stable.

In the third stage until the sixth, the emotions, sensations, beliefs and images which are relevant to the events are discussed. The clientele needs to discuss them while following the finger of the professional with eyes moving back and forth. The activity has to be repeated until the clientele will not find it stressful anymore to discuss what happened.

In the seventh stage, the patient will have to take note of anything that comes to his mind about the stressful event. The last one, stage eight, he will be evaluated with regards to the changes in his behavior. This is typically done at the last moments of the therapy.

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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