EMDR and Play Therapy

Eye Movement Desensitizaton and Repreocessing (EMDR) offers a treatment approach for child sexual abuse (CSA) which has research support and can often work quickly to treat the symptoms of posttraumatic stress in children. Integrating EMDR within a play therapy setting with many options for movement and creative expression increases the child’s ability to enter these memory networks briefly, manage the strong feelings which may arise and express these even when there are no clear words or they may have dissociated parts of the sexual abuse experience. Involving current caregivers when appropriate can magnify the treatment effect.