EDITORIAL published: 27 September 2019 doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02185 Editorial: Present and Future of EMDR in Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy Gianluca Castelnuovo 1,2 , Isabel Fernandez 3* and Benedikt L. Amann 4,5,6 1 Istituto Auxologico Italiano IRCCS, Psychology Research Laboratory, Ospedale San Giuseppe, Verbania, Italy, 2 Department of Psychology, Catholic University of Milan, Milan, Italy, 3 Psychotraumatology Research Center, Milan, Italy, 4 Centre Fòrum Research Unit, Institut de Neuropsiquiatria i Addiccions, Barcelona, Spain, 5 Institut Hospital del Mar d’Investigacions Mèdiques, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain, 6 CIBERSAM, Madrid, Spain Keywords: EMDR therapy, EMDR research, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, psychological trauma, mechanism of action, PTSD Editorial on the Research Topic Present and Future of EMDR in Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy is an evidence-based psychotherapy which has been recognized by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a first-choice Edited and reviewed by: Peter L. Fisher, treatment for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD; WHO, 2013). The new International University of Liverpool, Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (ISTSS) guidelines (Berliner et al., 2019) rated EMDR as United Kingdom strongly recommended in the treatment of PTSD in children, adolescents and adults. These *Correspondence: recommendations were based on high quality systematic reviews developed through Cochrane Isabel Fernandez database, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines, and the isabelf@emdritalia.it aforementioned WHO recommendation, as well as on the results of randomized controlled trials. In the last decade, there has been increasing research into the efficacy of EMDR in other psychiatric Specialty section: and somatic disorders with comorbid psychological trauma (Valiente-Gómez et al.). EMDR is based This article was submitted to on the Adaptive Information Processing (AIP) model, which posits that much of psychopathology Psychology for Clinical Settings, is due to the maladaptive encoding of and/or incomplete processing of traumatic or disturbing a section of the journal adverse life experiences (Hase et al.). Two recent articles have gone a step further and are highly Frontiers in Psychology relevant to the field. One, published in Nature by Baek et al. (2019), reveals EMDR’s mechanism Received: 02 August 2019 of action and neuroanatomical pathway using an animal model. The authors found that bilateral Accepted: 10 September 2019 stimulation, as compared to controlled conditions, led to a clear and persistent decrease in fear Published: 27 September 2019 behavior. Furthermore, the authors observed that bilateral stimulation increased neuronal activity Citation: in the superior colliculus and the mediodorsal thalamus, thus dampening the excitability of neurons Castelnuovo G, Fernandez I and Amann BL (2019) Editorial: Present in the basolateral nucleus of the amygdala. The other article is a review in Neuron about the and Future of EMDR in Clinical encoding of aversive memory by Maddox et al. (2019). The authors also discuss EMDR in detail Psychology and Psychotherapy. as an effective psychotherapy for re-writing the engrams of traumatic memories, which represent Front. Psychol. 10:2185. the basis for the persistency of traumatic memories, following an encoding of the threat experience doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02185 in the neural circuits. Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 1 September 2019 | Volume 10 | Article 2185 Castelnuovo et al. Present and Future of EMDR These publications are in line with 22 articles which were offering trauma-focused psychotherapy to a broader audience. included in a Research Topic “Present and Future of EMDR in Further articles review or investigate its underlying AIP model Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy.” The main motivation (Hase et al.) and its mechanism of action (Boukezzi et al.; for this Research Topic was an increasing interest from scientists Landin-Romero et al.; Matthijssen et al.; Pagani et al.; Pagani who focus their research on EMDR and from clinicians who et al.; Santarnecchi et al.). Of note, the first author of one use EMDR in clinical practice in different private and public systematic review about the mechanism of action of EMDR psychiatric or psychotherapeutic settings. Currently, more than therapy (Landin-Romero et al.) was awarded the Frontiers Young 25,000 psychologists and psychiatrists across 31 European Researchers Award in 2018. countries are trained in EMDR and are members of the EMDR In summary, due to increasing scientific and clinical interest Europe Association (personal correspondence Isabel Fernandez). in EMDR within the psychological and psychiatric fields world- With currently almost 180,000 views since its publication in 2017, wide, a successful Research Topic “Present and Future of EMDR and being positioned within the top 50 of the current Research in Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy” has been published. Topic, we believe that this reflects the increasing clinical and We included 22 articles covering a variety of innovative clinical research interest in the corresponding fields of psychology and and neurobiological aspects of EMDR. Further to this Research psychiatry. Articles published in this Research Topic include Topic, additional groundbreaking articles for the EMDR field EMDR therapy in new psychiatric and somatic comorbidities have been published in 2019, such as the Baek et al. (2019) with psychological trauma, such as depression (Hase et al.; study revealing the mechanism of action of EMDR in animals. Ostacoli et al.), substance use disorder (Carletto et al.), panic This underlines the growing interest in EMDR. However, further disorder (Horst et al.), and glioblastoma (Szpringer et al.). These robust randomized controlled trials of EMDR applications in articles highlight the contribution of EMDR therapy to the in well-researched and as yet unstudied psychopathological treatment of these disorders and its positive effect on trauma- disorders are necessary, as well as methodology-based scientific associated and/or psychiatric symptoms by addressing traumatic research about the specific mechanisms of action underlying and stressful experiences underlying the life history of these EMDR clinical efficacy in humans. clients. A systematic review also addressed, as stated before, the evidence of EMDR beyond PTSD in further psychiatric disorders AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS (Valiente-Gómez et al.). Furthermore, one article investigated the effect of EMDR on psychological trauma in clinical sub-threshold All authors listed have made a substantial, direct and intellectual states like low self-esteem (Griffioen et al.). The Research Topic contribution to the work, and approved it for publication. All also includes one meta-analysis of EMDR in children and authors had the idea of this clinical topic and served as editors adolescents with PTSD (Moreno-Alcázar et al.), which represents for all included articles. an extremely important field as trauma-orientated therapies should be applied from an early age, and another systematic FUNDING review about the evidence of EMDR in adult PTSD (Wilson et al.). As the most recent American Psychological Association This work was supported by a grant from the Plan Nacional (APA) recommendations on psychological and pharmacological de I+D+i and co-funded by the Instituto de Salud Carlos treatments for PTSD in adults (2019) caused controversy due to III-Subdirección General de Evaluación y Fomento de la its “conditional” recommendation of EMDR for the treatment Investigación with a Research Project to (PI/15/02242) and a of PTSD, a comment and rectification of available literature PERIS grant (SLT006/17/00038) from the Catalonia Government was also added to this Research Topic (Dominguez and Lee). to BA. Furthermore, he received a NARSARD Independent Due to this comment, the APA published recently an updated Investigator Award (no. 24397) from the Brain and Behavior version of the clinical practice guideline with the view that future & Behavior Research Foundation. We further acknowledge the systematic reviews and meta-analysis will probably change the generous support by the Centro de Investigación Biomédica en level of recommendation for EMDR, and also narrative exposure Red de Salud Mental (CIBERSAM), Madrid, Spain. therapy, from conditional to strong. New data were provided from five EMDR group protocols for ACKNOWLEDGMENTS dementia caregivers (Passoni et al.), in mass disasters (Maslovaric et al.; Trentini et al.), for Syrian refugees (Yurtsever et al.) and in We thank Francine Shapiro for creating a tradition on EMDR complex PTSD and dissociation (Gonzalez-Vazquez et al.). Due Research that is 30 years long. We thank all the authors and to often limited resources for individual psychotherapy, these researchers that have contributed to this first Research Topic on data of EMDR group interventions are of vital importance in EMDR Therapy. REFERENCES Berliner, L., Bisson, J., Cloitre, M., Forbes, D., Goldbeck, L., Jensen, T., et al. (2019). ISTSS PTSD Prevention and Treatment Guidelines Methodology and Baek, J., Lee, S., Cho, T., Kim, S. W., Kim, M., Yoon, Y., et al. Recommendations. Retrieved from: www.istss.org/treating-trauma/new-istss- (2019). Neural circuits underlying a psychotherapeutic regimen prevention-and-treatment-guidelines for fear disorders. Nature 566, 339–343. doi: 10.1038/s41586-019- Guideline Development Panel for the Treatment of PTSD in Adults, 0931-y American Psychological Association (2019). Summary of the clinical Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org 2 September 2019 | Volume 10 | Article 2185 Castelnuovo et al. Present and Future of EMDR practice guideline for the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder Conflict of Interest: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the (PTSD) in adults. Am. Psychol. 74, 596–607. doi: 10.1037/amp00 absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a 00473 potential conflict of interest. Maddox, S. A., Hartmann, J., Ross, R. A., and Ressler, K. J. (2019). deconstructing the gestalt: mechanisms of fear, threat, and trauma Copyright © 2019 Castelnuovo, Fernandez and Amann. This is an open-access article memory encoding. Neuron 102, 60–74. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2019. distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). 03.017 The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the WHO (2013). Guidelines for the Management of Conditions that are Specifically original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original Related to Stress. Geneva: World Health Organization. Available online publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. at: http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/85119/9789241505406_ No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these eng.pdf;jsessionid$=$A87FC4134F1F50FE3F66C587868D2F32?sequence$=$1 terms. 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