EMDR - Does It Work?

Heralded as a 'miracle cure', EMDR has an almost cult like following amongst some practitioners. Maybe it our wish to believe in the existence of a quick fix magical solution to our problems or just our fascination with the Victorian parlour trickery but few psychological treatments have received such remarkable attention, especially in the absence of a solid evidence base of it's effectiveness. Numerous controlled studies show that EMDR ameliorates symptoms of civilian PTSD better than doing nothing, but not a shred of good evidence exists that EMDR is superior to exposure-based treatments that CBT therapists have been administering routinely for decades. Paraphrasing British writer and critic Samuel Johnson, Harvard University psychologist Richard McNally nicely summed up the case for EMDR: “What is effective in EMDR is not new, and what is new is not effective".
The Britsh CBT & Counselling Service