How to Use EMDR for Brain Injuries

From 2000 through 2013, the number of traumatic brain injury cases that were reported exceeded 294,000 with another 26,561 cases being a result of the war in the year 2013.  The majority of these cases or 82.5% were classified as mild, 8% as moderate, and only 1% as severe.  Despite the rates of TBI’s, 53%-77% of the “expert” military and civilian providers (psychologists, psychiatric nurses, social workers, psychiatrists, speech and occupational therapists and physician’s assistants) had misconceptions about TBI diagnosis, outcomes, recovery, and management of symptoms.  New neuroimaging can detect changes in the white matter that impacts neural pathways that are responsible for the changes to behaviors and cognitive functioning after an injury.  White matter damage affects brain function and neural network connectivity to other regions of the brain and information can get lost as signals to the other hemisphere are disrupted.  When major hubs that are rich in neural networks are damaged, brain function, coordination, and communication are diminished.  The corpus callosum is rich in white matter and responsible for transferring information between hemispheres.  This is also the part of the brain most susceptible to injury.  Memory, decision making, impulse control, motor functions, learning, pain, and moods are all affected by TBI’s.  The degree to which mTBI recovery and deficit occurs is related to the duration of loss of consciousness, the location and number of the injuries, and white matter abnormalities.  This online course will help you decipher myth from fact, learn the different types of TBI’s, recent research, and how to use EMDR techniques effectively in order to treat this population.