Collision every night: Treating nightmares with trauma-focused methods: Case report
Case report of EMDR with patient with recurrent nightmares following the psychological trauma caused by a severe road traffic accident.
Article Abstract
“Introduction: We would like to present the case of a young patient with acute stress disorder and recurrent nightmares following the psychological trauma caused by a severe road traffic accident. The comprehensive therapy carried out at the Department of Traumatology included medication, trauma processing and a psychological method whose aim is to cease the development of nightmares.
Case Presentation: Psychiatric assessment and treatment was asked for a polytraumatised female patient at the Intensive Care Unit after she had undergone a neurosurgical intervention. Her medicinal treatment was continued at the Department of Traumatology. Besides the antidepressant venlafaxine she was treated in accordance with the EMDR protocol for acute stress disorder, and we also applied imagery rescripting to prevent her from having recurrent (daily) nightmares. As a result of the therapy, her symptoms were fast relieved, the nightmares stopped almost instantly, her mood improved, rumination and anxiety decreased significantly.
Conclusions: In view of the fast and significant symptomatic improvement, we can expect that the EMDR therapy and its protocol for acute stress disorder have successfully reactivated information processing, and besides the subjective relief we have managed to prevent a mental crisis that could lead to a suicide risk as well as the development of post-traumatic stress disorder. We also hope that the improvement will be long-lasting.”
—Description from publisher
Article Access
Open Access
Szabo, J., & Toth, S. (2021). Collision every night: Treating nightmares with trauma-focused methods: Case report. Sleep Vigilance, 5, 151-156. Open access: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41782-021-00126-8
Date
February 1, 2021
Creator(s)
József Szabó, Szilvia Tóth
Topics
Sleep
Extent
6 pages
Publisher
Springer Nature
Rights
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
APA Citation
Szabo, J., & Toth, S. (2021). Collision every night: Treating nightmares with trauma-focused methods: Case report. Sleep Vigilance, 5, 151-156. Open access: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41782-021-00126-8
Audience
EMDR Therapists, Other Mental Health Professionals
Language
English
Content Type
Article, Peer-Reviewed
Access Type
External Resource, Open Access
