Eye movement desensitization reprocessing for the treatment of anxiety in psychology internship applicants: An interrupted time series design

This study used an interrupted time series design to study the effectiveness of Eye Movement Desensitization Processing (EMDR) on the anxiety levels of 17 psychology graduate student participants who were in the process of applying to psychology internship sites. Participants were screened for pathology using the Symptom Checklist - Revised. Anxiety was assessed four times using the State Trait Anxiety Scale, twice prior to and twice following treatment with EMDR. Additionally, in an attempt to the account for some of the error variance due to history, the Schedule of Recent Events was given twice during the study, once prior to the EMDR treatment and once along with the final administration of the State Trait Anxiety Scale. Additional information about the effects of EMDR on anxiety, were obtained by monitoring heart rate and blood pressure changes during EMDR treatment for half of the participants. A dependent t-test on pre- and post-EMDR State Trait Anxiety Scale data failed to yield significant results. Other analyses also showed no effect of treatment. However, visual inspection of the data suggested that EMDR may have been effective for some participants. The range and diversity of participant's responses to anxiety over the course of the study, the relatively small sample size and design factors that increased the error variance were discussed in relation to the insignificant results. It was suggested that specific personality traits (e.g. characterological anxiety) and attributes of the distressing target event (e.g. amount of affect evoked) may act as intervening variables in an individual's response to EMDR treatment.

Dissertation/Thesis

English

Dianna W. Bolen

Bolen, D. W. (1999, August). Eye movement desensitization reprocessing for the treatment of anxiety in psychology internship applicants: An interrupted time series design. (Doctoral dissertation, Chicago School of Professional Psychology)