Using eye movement desensitization and reprocessing to treat complex PTSD in a biracial client.

Abstract

A biracial client's recovery from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) through the use of eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) is discussed to illustrate the interaction between ethnicity and phenotype as well as diagnosis and treatment considerations. This case explores a woman's experience of discrimination in and out of her home and her vulnerability to complex PTSD, and it documents the importance of the therapy focusing on experiences of discrimination and prejudice as well as abuse. It shows how the client structures her environment in a personally creative fashion to include representative features of various aspects of her identity, by her choice of where and who she teaches as well as how and with whom she spends her free time.The purpose of this article is to explore a mon one and may be especially relevant for psychotherapy case in which client charac-biracial and other minority clients because teristics, diagnosis, and treatment method of their higher representation in traumaare all psychologically related. The client's tized populations (Blanchard & Hickling, ethnic and cultural background is biracial, 1996;Root, 1996). Eye movement desensitiand her case typifies how being biracial has zation and reprocessing (EMDR) is an emessential meaning for the development of pirically substantiated method (Boudewyns identity and the vulnerability to discrimina-& Hyer, 1996; Devilly, Spence, & Rapee, tion. The diagnosis, that of complex post-1998; Kleinknecht& Morgan, 1992) that was traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), is a com-first validated on PTSD patients and is a• JoAn Rittenhouse, independent practice, Las Cruces, New Mexico.I thank Laura Brown, Stephen Brennan, and Rosalie Ackerman for their comments on drafts of this article, and I thank my client for her willingness to participate in this article and Wynne Broms and Gary Cunningham for their support.

2000 award winners.

“…Ethnopolitical practice uses mainstream psychological tools, such as cognitive-behavioral techniques, critical incident stress management (Chemtob, Tomas, Law, & Cremnier, 1997), racial stress innoculation (similar to the stress innoculation proposed by Foa, Rothbaum, Riggs, & Murdock, 1991), and eye movement desensitization reprocessing for racial trauma (see Rittenhouse, 2000, for an application of eye movement desensitization reprocessing for racial stress), among others. Given the spiritual component of racial trauma, use of an adjunct 12-step program of attitudinal healing circles has been suggested (Comas-Dfaz, in press).…”