What can we learn from using EMDR with children on the autistic spectrum?

Children suffering from Autistic Spectrum Disorders have fundamental impairments in their understanding of social relationships, emotions and understand the perspectives of others. They also have impairment in their communicative abilities. They can be frequently traumatized by their daily living experiences whilst living in a world in which their understandings are impaired. This paper aims to open up the discussion and stimulate research into and about just how far their deficits in understanding their worlds extends and to what extent these might be addressed or ameliorated during EMDR therapy. The paper will consider the cases of 10 ASD children when EMDR was used and its affects. ASD is a spectrum of disorders subsumed under a single diagnostic category. This paper also hopes to shed some light on these and will also offer some directions for parental differential diagnosis of different forms of ASD and whether EMDR therapy might be efficacious for these. Recent research in ASD suggests that the corpus callosum may be affected and also included in this paper, for comparison, are two cases of children who have agenesis of the corpus callosum who also receive EMDR. The paper will be illustrated by the use of video clips.

Conference

English

Joanne Morris-Smith

Morris-Smith, J. (2007, June). What can we learn from using EMDR with children on the autistic spectrum? Presentation at the 8th EMDR Europe Association Conference, Paris, France