THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, March 21, 1995 TAG: 9503210280
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JAMES SCHULTZ, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 128 lines
Bea doesn't remember much about the brutal attack, the blow to the head that left her sprawled near her back door, groceries tumbled this way and that. Somehow, despite a concussion and a skull fracture, she made it to her feet, screaming to her husband and children that something, somebody had hit her.
Bea's purse had been ripped from her hands. But the mugger had robbed her of much more than money. Bea's happiness, her sense of security, seemed to have been snatched, too - swallowed up in that sudden assault on a warm December night more than four years ago.
Forty-year-old Bea, a Norfolk schoolteacher who doesn't want her full name used, says that normal life became increasingly difficult. Painful years would pass until she found out about a controversial treatment that would help her mind to heal.
After the attack, Bea retreated into herself. She wouldn't go out after dark, cried constantly, came home directly from work and went to her bedroom, where she remained alone. Except for mealtimes, Bea barely spent any time with her family.
The unexpected death of her father from a heart attack in May 1992 and her father-in-law's death from cancer six months later intensified an already deep depression.
Therapy and counseling didn't help - until she began sessions last November in Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, or EMDR, with Virginia Beach psychotherapist Kathy Forti.
Within weeks, Bea's fears and anxieties began to slip away. She wanted to be around people, go out shopping alone. She felt energized.
She could feel happy.
``My husband can't believe the change in my attitudes,'' Bea said. ``At first I was leery. This therapy really does work.''
Bea's initial skepticism may have vanished, but not so that of mainstream psychotherapists. Some believe EMDR is simply a manifestation of the placebo effect, an improvement in a patient's condition related not to treatment or medication, but to personal beliefs.
Others cite the lack of rigorous scientific studies proving EMDR's long-term success rate.
``Patient testimonials are pretty close to irrelevant,'' said William T. Riley, associate professor of psychiatry and psychology at the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond. ``For any patient population you'll be able to find individuals who have responded extremely well to a specific therapy.
``The literature shows that EMDR is no more effective than what we already do. We haven't done any large-scale studies yet. It's still pretty early to tell what's going on.''
What's going on, proponents claim, is nothing less than a fundamental reprogramming of the brain similar to the curative power of deep sleep. Then, the eyes move rapidly back and forth under closed lids. Some scientists believe such rapid eye movement, or REM, permits the brain to organically integrate a day's experience into a sleeper's subconsciousness.
A patient is wide awake, however, when an EMDR therapist moves his or her fingers in certain preset patterns in front of the patient's eyes. The patient visually tracks the fingers' motion while recalling traumatic memories or reliving a tragic experience.
One theory as to how EMDR works, as yet unsubstantiated, is that eye movement somehow releases brain chemicals that counter other substances produced during extreme stress. The stress-produced substances, according to this theory, prevent traumas from being integrated into long-term memory.
Because memories blocked from integration cause depression, fear and anxiety, the theory goes, removing the blockage leads to a kind of profound mental self-healing.
``I was skeptical too. I thought it sounded too good to be true,'' therapist Forti said. ``I was really anxious to try it out on clients. Ninety percent of the time, it has worked fantastically.''
Thus far, Forti estimates, she has used EMDR to treat more than 100 patients. But, she says, the technique should not always be the therapy of choice.
``This is not the magic cure for everything,'' Forti cautioned. ``This seems to be the fastest for accidents and trauma - any type of thing with a long history of emotion attached to it that is causing long-standing pain.''
EMDR was developed by Francine Shapiro, a California psychologist who has said the therapy was born one day in 1987 as she was brooding on personal problems during a prolonged walk.
Interviewed last July by ABC News correspondent Lynn Sherr on the television program ``20/20,'' Shapiro said she noticed that disturbed thoughts caused her eyes to move in certain ways. Once the movement ceased, her mind had been calmed.
``I started doing it deliberately to see if it would work, and the same thing happened,'' Shapiro said. ``The thought shifted away, and when I brought it back, it wasn't as disturbing.''
Shapiro refined the techniques and, by 1989, was using them to treat Vietnam veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. As news of Shapiro's techniques spread and were published in scientific journals, other therapists clamored for information.
Soon, Shapiro was training others in EMDR.
``What Francine Shapiro did is brilliant,'' said Steven Lazrove, an assistant psychiatry professor at Yale University School of Medicine. ``It's exactly the way discoveries are made. I'm really convinced this is a breakthrough in the way we do psychotherapy. More broadly, this is a story about relieving human suffering.''
Lazrove, like Virginia Beach psychotherapist Forti, says he has seen a 90 percent success rate. He has treated 150 patients over 2 1/2 years. He's about to oversee a six-month EMDR study that will involve 60 test subjects at the Yale Psychiatric Institute.
``To say that studies have shown that EMDR doesn't work is inaccurate,'' Lazrove contended. ``We're still at the phase of gathering information. EMDR will have to stand or fall according to what the research shows.''
Lazrove says thousands of therapists across the country have been trained to use EMDR, a training overseen and strictly controlled by Shapiro. Shapiro's proprietary interest in the training worries critics like MCV's Riley. While he concedes that abuse of the therapy is possible without strict controls, Riley feels that Shapiro may be more concerned with profit than with science.
``Her workshops cost. And they seem to keep going up,'' Riley said. ``Basically, she's set it up so you have to be trained by her and sign away your ability to train others. She's essentially trying to maintain a monopoly.''
Studies and training aside, what matters most, argues psychotherapist Forti, is EMDR's ultimate curative effect.
EMDR ``is not just waving your hands back and forth. There's a protocol involved,'' Forti said. ``Clients in pain are willing to do anything to get some relief. The key is to make people functional.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
PAUL AIKEN/Staff
Valirie Earley follows the moving fingers of psychotherapist Kathy
Forti in Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy.
by CNB