Who responds to EMDR and who doesn’t?: Factors associated with treatment response in adult patients with PTSD

This study investigated pre-treatment factors predicting non-response to eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) among adult patients diagnosed as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) at a trauma clinic. Before the treatment, participants were evaluated with Clinician-administered PTSD Scale, the Symptom Checklist-90-Revised, and the Dissociative Experiences Scale. A total of 69 patients underwent average four sessions of EMDR and 60 completed the post-treatment evaluation. Thirty nine (65%) of 60 patients were classified as treatment responder and 21 (35%) as non-responder when response was defined as more than 30% decrease in total CPAS score. The non-responders had higher level of numbing symptoms but not other PTSD symptom clusters such as avoidance, hyperarousal and intrusion. The number of psychiatric comorbidity was also associated with treatment non-response but to a lesser degree as multivariate analysis showed. These results indicate symptomatic patterns of PTSD may predict treatment response and importance of numbing symptoms previously shown in clinical trials was replicated from the real world data.

Conference

English

Daeho Kim

Kim, D. (2014, January). Who responds to EMDR and who doesn't?: Factors associated with treatment response in adult patients with PTSD. In EMDR and research (Udi Oren, Chair). Presentation at the 2nd EMDR Asia International Conference, Manila, The Philippines