Journal of anxiety disorders
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Much of the Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) efficacy research has been widely criticized, limiting scientific understanding of its therapeutic components. The present investigation of Eye Movement Desensitization (EMD) effectiveness included undergraduate students reporting current intrusive cognitions conceming a traumatic event. Forty-five participants received a single treatment session of either: (a) EMD, as described by Shapiro [J. ⋯ During the treatment session, both desensitization groups were superior to the non-directive group in reducing reported vividness of the mental image of the original event. However, the non-directive group improved to the level of the two other groups by the following week. Rapid saccadic eye movements were therefore unrelated to immediate treatment effects for this sub-clinical sample, and non-directive treatment largely yielded eventual outcomes equivalent to the two desensitization conditions.
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Cognitive and psycho-physiological models of panic disorder stress the role of interpretation bias in the maintenance of the disorder. Several studies have reported results consistent with this hypothesis, but it is still unclear whether this bias precedes panic disorder or is a consequence of it. In the present study, we compared the interpretations of ambiguous scenarios of children of individuals with panic disorder, children of individuals with animal phobia, and children of healthy controls. ⋯ The results revealed that (a) children of panic disordered parents but not of parents with animal phobia and of healthy controls showed a significant increase in anxious interpretations after priming; and (b) this significant increase emerged only after priming through presentation of a panic-relevant model and not after priming through presentation of a phobia-relevant or cold-relevant model. Because the children of panic disordered parents did not have panics themselves, their increase in panic interpretations can be viewed as a vulnerability factor. Longitudinal studies should clarify the role of interpretation style in the etiology of panic disorder.