Online Eye movement desensitization during COVID-19 pandemic helps improve mental health: Study

UK: Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) administered through the internet was proven to be an effective treatment for individuals with mental health concerns in a new study.

"EMDR therapists, during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, are required to adopt creative and flexible responses in order to meet the clients' needs. Office closures and travel restrictions to and from work implied that the therapists have to work online," the authors wrote in their study. "The findings suggest that they did so successfully." 

This study was conducted by Iain W. McGowan and the team, the results of which were published in BMC Psychiatry journal on 11th November 2021.

The global Covid-19 epidemic has forced psychotherapists to relocate their profession to online platforms, in addition to having a harmful influence on the population's physical and emotional wellbeing. This service review investigates the effectiveness of EMDR Therapy offered through the internet.

A self–selected group of EMDR therapists who subscribe to either a JISC Mail discussion list or the UK or All Ireland National EMDR Associations were asked to provide a real-world service review. Author-created questionnaires were utilized to collect data on the efficacy of online EMDR as well as client and therapist characteristics.

The results of this work stated as follow:

1. Thirty-three therapists reported effectiveness data on 93 individuals in total.

2. All four psychometrics evaluated in adult, children, and young people populations showed statistically significant and clinically relevant decreases.

3. The outcome of the client was unrelated to the therapist's experience.

4. The data also reveal that the length of time spent practicing EMDR and the degree of accreditation in EMDR are unrelated to outcome, implying that EMDR may be employed successfully independent of experience following EMDR training.

5. According to the findings of this study, EMDR is just as effective when provided remotely as it is when done face to face, which is consistent with the findings of Kuhn and Owen.

6. Researchers also remark that the impact sizes observed here are greater than those obtained in meta-analyses of CBT therapies given through the internet.

7. When compared to passive controls. Surprisingly, they discovered that online CBT outperformed active control groups.

In conclusion, this looks to be the first research to describe the effectiveness of online EMDR provided using real-world practice data. The findings demonstrate that EMDR online can reduce clinical symptoms; nevertheless, given the limitations of this study, researchers advised caution in interpreting the results. Clinical research testing the clinical and financial efficacy of online EMDR are necessary.

Reference:

McGowan, I. W., Fisher, N., Havens, J., & Proudlock, S. (2021). An evaluation of eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy delivered remotely during the Covid–19 pandemic. In BMC Psychiatry (Vol. 21, Issue 1). Springer Science and Business Media LLC. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-021-03571-x