Rapid eye movement therapy reduces trauma

An innovative form of rapid eye movement therapy with promising results is helping people recover from emotional trauma has won a prestigious research award.

Dr Chris Lee, Director of the Clinical Psychology Program within the Murdoch University School of Psychology, has shown that when a therapist has a patient focus on their trauma and facilitates their eyes to move rapidly from side-to-side they experience more significant trauma reduction than when no eye movement therapy is used.

Dr Lee’s research has been recognised with the inaugural Francine Shapiro award for research excellence at the 10th EMDR Europe Conference in Amsterdam.

The international award recognises the most significant contribution to research in understanding how Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) contributes to trauma recovery.

Dr Lee says EMDR is a complex method of psychotherapy that integrates many of the successful elements of a range of therapeutic approaches, and combines them with eye movements in ways which stimulate the brain’s information processing system.

“It appears that people who experience a traumatic event suffer disruption to Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, the stage of sleep when substantial emotional memory processing occurs,” Dr Lee said.

“The person is unable to process the event and thus the memory of the event continues to be experienced in its original traumatic form.”

Dr Lee’s PhD student Sarah Schubert has been studying the physiological responses people experience, (heart rate, sweating, respiratory rate), when they process their trauma incidents using EMDR compared to when they don’t use EMDR.

Ms Schubert was honoured with an award for best poster presentation at the conference.