Correlation between depressive and post-traumatic symptoms and their response to EMDR treatment: Results from the EMDR vs CBT EDEN study

Depression is one of leading cause of disease burden worldwide, and it’s associated with huge personal, social and economic costs. Increased evidence suggests a significant relationship between recurrent depressive disorders, stressful life events and psychological traumas. Recent studies suggest that EMDR may be effective in improving depressive symptoms and quality of life of patients. In one of the EMDR European Depression Network (EDEN) studies, the efficacy of EMDR as compared to CBT as adjunctive treatments to antidepressant medication in treating recurrent depression was evaluated [1]. The results showed that the majority of patients were able to significantly reduce their depressive symptoms after only 15 therapy sessions, also maintaining a good clinical benefit 6 months after the end of the treatments. EMDR treatment was resulted to be as effective as CBT in reducing clinical levels of depression, with a significant difference in favor of EMDR treatment at the end of the intervention phase. The aim of this presentation is to analyze in more depth the results obtained during the study, showing the correlations between depressive symptoms and post-traumatic symptoms before, during and after treatments. The aim is to evaluate whether there are differences in the response to EMDR or CBT treatment.

Conference

English

Sara Carletto
Micaela Barnato
Luca Ostacoli
Marco Pagani
Isabel Fernandez

Carletto, S., Barnato. M., Ostacoli, L., Pagani, M., & Fernandez, I. (2021, June). Correlation between depressive and post-traumatic symptoms and their response to EMDR treatment: Results from the EMDR vs CBT EDEN study. Presentation at the EMDR Europe Association Conference, Virtual