The promise of EMDR in family and systemic psychotherapy: a clinical complement to Field and Cottrell

Abstract

Annalisa Field and David Cottrell's careful and balanced summary of the current state of evidence of the effectiveness of eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) with children and adolescents is to be welcomed. They conclude that there is, despite an overall lack of good quality studies, some encouraging emerging evidence. They set out a future scenario for development in which these hopeful indications may be sufficient to convince clinicians to train and consider using EMDR in practice. That may in turn lead to more people publishing the results of their nascent practice, and greater availability of therapists would enable larger scale randomized controlled studies to be designed and carried out. In this clinical addendum I seek to complement Field and Cottrell's sense of promise by setting out ways in which EMDR has become incorporated in my systemic psychotherapy practice during the last 3 years.