Treating traumatic memories: A comparative study of the effectiveness of EMDR and constructed awareness

This comparative study evaluated the effectiveness of a recently developed approach to therapy called Constructed Awareness (CA) compared to Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) for clients who experienced trauma symptoms resulting from memories of at least one traumatic event. Thirty (n = 30) volunteer subjects were randomly assigned to a group that received CA treatment and a group that received EMDR treatment. Investigators met with each participant for three sessions and took three measures (pretest and posttest). The Trauma Symptom Checklist-40 (TSC-40) was used to measure trauma symptoms, the Central Sensitization Inventory (CSI) was used to measure central sensitization, and the Subjective Unit of Disturbance Scale (SUDS) was used to measure participants’ disturbance before and after processing a memory. Mann-Whitney U tests were used to analyze the differences between the two groups. The data provided statistical significance that CA was more effective than EMDR at reducing trauma symptoms on the TSC-40, sensitization on the CSI, and subjective disturbance on the SUDS.

Journal

English

Tyler Orr
Oliver McMahan
Debra Gladden

Orr, T., McMahan, O., & Gladden, D. (2024, March). Treating traumatic memories: A comparative study of the effectiveness of EMDR and constructed awareness. PsyArXiv