EMDR to treat patients with psychosis.
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Trauma Therapy for Psychosis: Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) for people with a psychotic illness
IRAS ID
161108
Contact name
Simon Marlow
Contact email
ISRCTN Number
ISRCTN43816889
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
We hope to offer people with the mental health difficulty called psychosis a brief therapy treatment to reduce the impact of previous difficult / traumatic experiences. Psychosis is a mental illness characterised by hearing things that others may not be able to hear, and believe things that others find hard to believe. The suggested therapy is called Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) and is known to be safe and effective in treating disorders clearly linked to trauma such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Psychosis is understood to be linked with trauma in a similar way to PTSD but this therapy has not been tested for how well it works in this illness.
We will recruit 36 people with psychosis after discussing the details of the study in detail with them and getting their informed consent. 12 of these people will be randomly allocated to not receive treatment but continue there normal care with the psychiatric services (treatment as usual). They will be offered the treatment at the end of the study. 24 of these people will be randomly allocated to have the EMDR treatment. Everybody will have an interview with a researcher before and after the treatment period, as well as after 6 months. At these interviews patients will be assessed on measurement scales that test for the impact of previous traumatic events, the symptoms of psychosis and PTSD, and a measurement of their quality of life.
This study will be completed in Cornwall, UK, and will be open to patients who are known to suffer from psychosis and normally have support from the psychiatric services locally. The study will be funded locally.
We hope to see that patients who receive this treatment have improvements in their symptoms of mental health problems as well as their quality of life.
REC name
South West - Cornwall & Plymouth Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
15/SW/0034
Date of REC Opinion
27 Feb 2015
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion