A five-day inpatient EMDR treatment programme for PTSD: Pilot study
Preliminary effectiveness of an intensive five-day inpatient treatment with EMDR and trauma-informed yoga for patients with PTSD.
Article Abstract
“Background: Trauma-focused psychotherapies for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have been demonstrated to be efficacious, but also have considerable non-response and dropout rates. Intensive treatment may lead to faster symptom reduction, which may contribute to treatment motivation and thereby to reduction of dropout.
Objective: The aim of the current study was to investigate the feasibility and preliminary effectiveness of an intensive five-day inpatient treatment with Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) and trauma-informed yoga for patients with PTSD.
Method: A non-controlled pilot study with 12 adult patients with PTSD was conducted. At baseline the PTSD diagnosis was assessed with the Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale (CAPS-5) and comorbid disorders with the Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview (MINI). Primary outcome was self-reported PTSD symptom severity (PTSD Check List for DSM-5; PCL-5) measured at the beginning of day 1 (T1), at the end of day 5 (T2) and at follow-up on day 21 (T3). Reliable change indexes (RCI) and clinically significant changes were calculated.
Results: From T1 to T3, PTSD symptoms significantly improved with a large effect size (Cohen’s d = 0.91). Nine of the 11 patients who completed treatment showed reliable changes in terms of self-reported PTSD. At T3, two of the patients no longer met criteria for PTSD as measured with the PCL-5. One patient dropped out after the first day. No serious adverse events occurred.
Conclusions: The majority of patients in our pilot study experienced symptom reduction consistent with reliable changes in this five-day inpatient treatment with EMDR and yoga. Randomized controlled trials – with longer follow up periods – are needed to properly determine efficacy and efficiency of intensive clinical treatments for PTSD compared to regular treatment. This is one of the first studies to show that intensive EMDR treatment is feasible and is indicative of reliable improvement in PTSD symptoms in a very short time frame.”
—Description from publisher
Article Access
Open Access
Mendez, M. Z., Nijdam, M. J., ter Heide, F. J. J., van der Aa, N., & Olff, M. (2017). A five-day inpatient EMDR treatment programme for PTSD: Pilot study. European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 9(1):1425575. Open access: https://doi.org/10.1080/20008198.2018.1425575
Date
December 23, 2017
Creator(s)
Mayaris Zepeda Méndez, Mirjam J. Nijdam, F. Jackie June ter Heide
Contributor(s)
Niels van der Aa, Miranda Olff
Topics
PTSD
Practice & Methods
Inpatient/Residential, Integrative Therapies, Mindfulness
Extent
10 pages
Publisher
Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Rights
© 2018 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons CC BY license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. You are not required to obtain permission to reuse this article in part or whole.
APA Citation
Mendez, M. Z., Nijdam, M. J., ter Heide, F. J. J., van der Aa, N., & Olff, M. (2017). A five-day inpatient EMDR treatment programme for PTSD: Pilot study. European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 9(1):1425575. Open access: https://doi.org/10.1080/20008198.2018.1425575
Audience
EMDR Therapists, Other Mental Health Professionals
Language
English
Content Type
Article, Peer-Reviewed
Access Type
External Resource, Open Access
