SOME CONSIDERATIONS ABOUT EMDR AND PSYCHOSIS

The aim of this paper is to outline some considerations about the efficacy and applicability of Eye Movement Desensibilization and Reprocessing (EMDR) approach on psychotic patients. EMDR is receiving great attention from different scholars and across different approaches. Several meta-analyses have shown the effectiveness of EMDR therapy in treating Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (see Jonas et al. 2013; Chen et al. 2014, 2015). According to contemporary scientific literature it is have been noticed that a diagnosis of psychotic disorder does not always represent an exclusion criterion for applying an EMDR intervention (van der Vleugen et al. 2015). A comorbidity exists between psychosis and Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and this could mean that a common landscape between these two dimensions may be explored (Kim and Lee 2016, Millan et al. 2017). PTSD patients that later develop psychotic symptoms have often a story of early abuse and they could probably benefit of an EMDR approach. The authors of the present paper evaluate the existing scientific literature about the use of EMDR for psychotic patients, showing how the available data seem to indicate it as part of a more complex intervention, able not only to reduce the impact of explicit symptoms, but also to make a change of a pervasive imagery and core negative believes that maintain a kind distortion in the inner and external world of the patient. Also if no real evidence is still available about the use of EMDR in psychosis, there are a few promising studies regarding its applicability for the post-traumatic aspects often existing in psychotic disorders (Hardy and van den Berg 2017).