Re:Cahill (2000) on Van Etten and Taylor (1998)

Thanks for the Cahill article. His conclusions mirror my own regarding what the empirical literature currently tells us about EMDR. He also confirms the important point I made earlier to Dr. Shapiro about the inappropriateness of trying to compare across studies to draw conclusions about EMDR's superior efficacy and efficiency.

He makes several important points about the Van Etten and Taylor 1998 meta-analysis:

1. They did not include studies directly comparing EMDR with behavior therapy, something that is necessary to conclude that EMDR is superior to CBT.

2. The meta-analysis did not include the study by Devilly and Spence (1999) which compared EMDR against CBT for PTSD and found that CBT was superior (because it was yet unpublished).

3. Van Etten and Taylor did not use the standard procedure to compute effect sizes for the studies (because the appropriate studies have not been done that would make these calculations possible).

4. Numerous dismantling studies were not included in the analyses. The majority of the component studies do not demonstrate the efficacy of eye movements.

Interesting things to ponder when trying to use this meta-analysis to prop up EMDR.

Replies:

Re:Cahill (2000) on Van Etten and Taylor (1998), by GP, 09/13/00 Re: companion article to Cahill (2000) , by UFL, 09/13/00 Re:Cahill (2000), by Brian, 10/01/00

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