EMDR in children with chronic impairments: How to strengthen child and parents

Children with chronic impairments such as intellectual disabilities, autism and chronic illness have high rates of exposure to traumatic stressors and are vulnerable to develop trauma related psychopathology. Their parents have a great risk to be confronted with overwhelming child related negative events. Parental posttraumatic stress is an important predictor of long-term posttraumatic stress in children. In line with this it is highly important to include parents in child treatment. However, interventions specifically focused on the parents and parental functioning have rarely been systematically studied.

In this workshop participants will learn
• how EMDR treatment of (a)parent(s) can be used to facilitate trauma treatment of their child
• how EMDR can be used as an educational tool
• how to motivate parents for their own EMDR treatment
• how to integrate treatment of (a)parent(s) in the child's treatment plan

Several cases will be presented and discussed with the use of video material.

Conference

English

Liesberth Mevissen

Mevissen, L. (2015, July). EMDR in children with chronic impairments: How to strengthen child and parents. Presentation at the 16th EMDR Europe Association Conference, Milan, Italy