Could EMDR be the key to treating reproductive health trauma? 

A description of one women’s experience using EMDR to help perinatal mood and anxiety disorders (PMADs) and reproductive health trauma.

Article Description

“…When it came time to push, the baby still wouldn’t come out. In a phone interview, years later, Rocio can still recall how nervous she felt as she sensed the nurses’ frustrations building. ‘I just really felt that pressure from everyone around me, like I wasn’t doing it right,’ says Rocio. She felt like a failure—and powerless, like she wasn’t in control of her own body. She’d expected childbirth to be tough but joyful, and she found herself questioning whether her experience was normal…

‘I didn’t know that birth could be traumatic. I didn’t know that postpartum anxiety was a thing,’ says Rocio. ‘I’d always heard about postpartum depression, but I wasn’t weeping. I didn’t think about self-harm.'”

—Description from publisher

Article Access

Open Access

O’Neil, L. (2023). Could EMDR be the key to treating reproductive health trauma? Marie Claire. https://www.marieclaire.com/culture/emdr-reproductive-health-trauma/