A comparison of CBT and EMDR for sexually abused Iranian girls

Fourteen randomly assigned Iranian girls ages 12-13 who had been sexually abused received up to 12 sessions of CBT or EMDR treatment.Assessment of post-traumatic stress symptoms and problem behaviors were completed at pre-treatment and 2 weeks post-treatment. Both treatments showed very large effect sizes on the post-traumatic symptom outcomes, and a modest effect size on the behavior outcome, all statistically significant. A non-significant trend on self-reported post-traumatic stress symptoms favored EMDR over CBT.Treatment efficiency was calculated by dividing effect size by number of sessions; EMDR was significantly more efficient. Limitations include small N, single therapist for each treatment condition, and lack of long-term followup. These findings suggest that both CBT and EMDR can help girls to recover from the effects of sexual abuse, and that structured trauma treatments can be applied to children in other cultures.

Conference

English

Nasrin Jaberghaderi
Ricky Greenwald
Allen Rubin
Shiva Dolatabadim
Shahin Oliaee Zand

Jaberghaderi, N., Greenwald, R., Rubin, A., Dolatabadi, S., & Zand, S. O. (2002, November). A comparison of CBT and EMDR for sexually abused Iranian girls. Poster presented at the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies 18th Annual Meeting, Baltimore, MD