/emdr-therapy-webapp2

Web application for self-administered EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) treatment.

Primary LanguageJavaScriptGNU General Public License v3.0GPL-3.0

emdr-therapy-webapp2

A simple web application for a self administrated EMDR treatment. Can be saved and used offline. Download it and open index.html in your browser.

Online DEMO: https://nikuzz.github.io/emdr-therapy-webapp2/

What is EMDR?

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a psychotherapy that enables people to heal from the symptoms and emotional distress that are the result of disturbing life experiences. Repeated studies show that by using EMDR therapy people can experience the benefits of psychotherapy that once took years to make a difference.[...] More than 30 positive controlled outcome studies have been done on EMDR therapy. Some of the studies show that 84%-90% of single-trauma victims no longer have post-traumatic stress disorder after only three 90-minute sessions. Another study, funded by the HMO Kaiser Permanente, found that 100% of the single-trauma victims and 77% of multiple trauma victims no longer were diagnosed with PTSD after only six 50-minute sessions. [...] Over 100,000 clinicians throughout the world use the therapy. Millions of people have been treated successfully over the past 25 years.

cit. What is EMDR? (emdr.com)

How EMDR works

Oversimplified a trained clinician moves horizontally a pencil or a finger. The client follows this movement with his or her eyes while thinking about a particular disturbing life experience. Doing so resulsts in bilateral reprocessing in the brain, similar to REM movement during sleep. The negative emotion is rated on a scale prior administration and is expected to diminish after a couple of several minute sessions.

The purpose of this app

Classic EMDR uses a finger or a pencil for eye tracking induced bilateral brain processing. This application automates the process which may become tiresome for many clinicians on a daily basis. More importantly it offers not only one, but three sensory stimulations:

  • Vision: eye tracked bilateral moving object
  • Audio: bilateral sound stimulation using headphones
  • Vibration: vibrating Android phones in each hand (using a companion app in development)

By combining and using those three different stimulation techniques in parallel a better success rate can be expected compared to classic EMDR using only a finger or a pencil.

Hardware devices

There are a couple of hardware devices serving the same purpose. Their main disadvantage is the high price and limited availability in some world regions.

Further information