Clinicians’ experiences of using Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) with adolescents who have experienced trauma: a qualitative study in the UK

In the United Kingdom, there are growing pressures for adolescents’ mental health support and post-trauma interventions. Eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy is recommended in the UK by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE, 2018) for treating post-traumatic distress in young people. Whilst quantitative research has offered promising findings on the outcomes of EMDR with young people, and limited qualitative research has examined clinicians’ experiences of using EMDR in the UK with various populations, there is a lack of qualitative understanding of adolescent-specific EMDR practice in the UK. To address this gap, this research explored clinicians’ experiences of delivering and adapting EMDR as a trauma intervention in a UK context. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 accredited EMDR clinicians who use EMDR with adolescents across various UK contexts. Data was analysed using Braun and Clarke’s (2006, 2019) six phases of reflexive thematic analysis. The analysis found five main themes and six associated subthemes. Findings underscore the importance of the therapeutic relationship and containment in adolescent EMDR. The findings also discuss how clinicians adapted EMDR to meet adolescents’ developmental and relational needs. Clinicians perceived adolescent EMDR as a distinctive and transformational trauma intervention, but only when the conditions were right. Clinicians described adolescent EMDR as system-dependent, where UK and adolescent systems could either hold or hinder EMDR. Important implications for adolescent EMDR practice, workforce, training, and supervision recommendations in a UK context are highlighted.