EMDR

[stellina615]

Hi all,

I've worked on an acute inpatient psychiatric unit for about 2 years. We don't get the opportunity to follow up with pts after discharge unless they come back to us, so I don't know very much about various coping/healing techniques employed in the outpatient setting. I had never heard of EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) until it was suggested to me today by my own therapist as a way to work through some traumatic events of the past. Are there any patients or providers out there who could offer their two cents about the process and the outcome? Thanks very much!

[elkpark]

There are a lot of people who swear by EMDR; there is also literature out there that supposedly debunks the entire theory. I have a psychologist friend who spent time and effort over a few years getting trained and certified in EMDR when it was supposedly the newest, greatest thing that was going to cure everyone -- a few years ago, I asked him about the articles I'd seen criticizing it for being nothing more than "placebo effect" and what he thought about it, since he was using it in his practice, and he just commented kinda vaguely that he wasn't really using it anymore but didn't want to go into any more detail than that.

I think there are still a lot of people (practitioners) out there who are big fans, though.