Religious change and post-traumatic growth following EMDR trauma therapy

ABSTRACT

This systematic review examined the question whether positive religious/spiritual (R/S) change is facilitated by EMDR trauma therapy. The question is asked whether any such R/S change is simply a feature of overall post-traumatic growth (PTG), or is it a form of change specific to EMDR? This systematic review found a number of articles showing that R/S change could follow EMDR, and also could be a feature of overall PTG. Further quantitative studies are needed to discover whether and how R/S change following EMDR is independent of PTG, or related to other aspects of PTG.

KEYWORDS:

• Trauma: therapy: EMDR: religious change: spiritual change

Acknowledgements

Grateful acknowledgements to New York University in London for the award of a Distinguished Research Fellowship facilitating the preparation of this paper. Very many thanks to the EMDR users whose experiences and reflections led to this paper, and which have been so interesting and important to me.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.