Church, D., Stapleton, P., Vasudevan, A., O'Keefe, T. · Frontiers in Psychology · 2022
Searches retrieved 4,167 results; after screening, 139 studies met broader criteria and 56 were RCTs (total N=2,013), 41 of which were published after the authors' 2013 predecessor review. The review references 8 separate meta-analyses (covering anxiety, depression, PTSD in adults and children/youth, somatic symptoms, and mechanism/active-ingredient questions) but does not itself compute a single pooled effect size — it is a condition-by-condition narrative synthesis, citing each condition's own independently-conducted meta-analysis where one exists (e.g., Clond 2016 for anxiety, Nelms & Castel 2016 for depression, Sebastian & Nelms 2017 for PTSD) and summarizing individual RCTs narratively where no meta-analysis exists (phobias, weight/cravings, sports performance, insomnia).
This is one of the broadest reviews of the clinical EFT evidence base to date — over 2,000 participants across 56 randomized trials, spanning anxiety, depression, PTSD, phobias, pain, and more, with real biomarker studies (cortisol, gene expression) folded in alongside the psychological outcomes. A synthesis this wide is what starts to move a technique from 'promising in isolated trials' to a credible, evidence-based practice clinicians can point to across an entire range of conditions.
If the breadth of positive findings across anxiety, depression, PTSD, pain, and more holds up under independent scrutiny, it could mean a single, simple technique offers meaningful relief across the range of conditions that keep people from functioning day to day — useful precisely because it doesn't require finding the 'right' specialist for each separate problem. Because the technique is learned once and self-administered from then on, a person could in principle carry it across conditions and across years without ever booking a new appointment for a new symptom.
This review already points to cortisol and gene-expression studies scattered across the literature — the next big step is pulling those into a dedicated, prospective multi-site trial that tracks cortisol, inflammatory panels, heart-rate variability, and gene expression together in the same patients, to see whether they move as a coordinated cascade rather than in isolated pockets of evidence. Given the sheer breadth of conditions covered here, dose-response and durability studies — how many sessions, how long gains last, whether app-based or telehealth delivery holds up as well as in-person — would help turn this narrative synthesis into a more actionable clinical protocol.
| Design | Systematic review |
|---|---|
| Participants | 2013 people |
| Population | mixed populations across anxiety, depression, PTSD, phobias, pain, insomnia, weight/cravings, sports performance, and physiological/biomarker studies |
| Outcome measures | varies by condition section: SA-45, PCL-M, HADS, BDI, cortisol, gene expression, and others |
| Journal | Frontiers in Psychology |
| Year | 2022 |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Method | EFT / tapping |
| Publication type | Dissertation |
| Verification | ✓ Confirmed against the primary source |
Church, D., Stapleton, P., Vasudevan, A., & O'Keefe, T. (2022). Clinical EFT as an evidence-based practice for the treatment of psychological and physiological conditions: A systematic review. Frontiers in Psychology. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.951451
This record is part of the Tapping Evidence Base — an openly-sourced, fully-referenced directory of the research on EFT/tapping.
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