EMDR is not an empirically supported treatment for combat-related PTSD…yet: A response to Elisha C. Hurley, Dmin, Colonel, USA (Retired)

As U. S. military veterans ourselves, we respect Colonel Hurley’s 30 years of military service to our country. We also appreciate this psychotherapeutic experience. We applaud and wholeheartedly agree with his commitment to “providing our military personnel with the most effectice treatment modalities possibe” (Hurley, in press, p. 1). It is due to this very commitment that we wrote the narrative review (not a meta-analysis) asking whether eye-movement desensitization and processing (EMDR) reduces posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in combat veterans (Albright & Thyer, 2010). We reinterate our conclusion that the evidence supporting the use of EMDR to treat combat veterans afflicted with PTSD does not rise to the threshold of an empirically supported treatment. We aslo reinterate our recommenction that further research be conducted to determine if EMDR is effective with Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) and Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) combat veterans. [Excerpt]

Journal

English

David L. Albright
Bruce Thyer

Albright, D. L., & Thyer, B. (2010, November). EMDR is not an empirically supported treatment for combat-related PTSD?yet: A response to Elisha C. Hurley, Dmin, Colonel, USA (Retired). Behavioral Interventions, 25(4), 355-360. doi:10.1002/bin.304