Outcome-specific record — catalogued as: EMDR vs EFT trial — depression outcome (as tabulated in Nelms & Castel 2016)
Karatzias, T., Power, K., Brown, K., McGoldrick, T., Begum, M., Young, J. et al. · The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease · 2011
Depression symptoms decreased by 28% (d=0.69) in this analyzed subsample; the same trial's anxiety and PTSD outcomes are recorded in separate records (karatzias-2011-ptsd-anxiety).
If tapping keeps matching up reasonably well against EMDR for depression tied to PTSD, it could mean trauma survivors get another effective option where EMDR-trained clinicians are scarce or waitlists are long within public health systems like the NHS. Unlike EMDR, which always requires a trained clinician in the room, tapping can be handed to the patient as a self-administered skill they keep using between and after appointments.
With EFT tracking reasonably close to EMDR for depression tied to PTSD in this subsample, the next step is pairing future head-to-head trials with objective markers — cortisol, heart-rate variability, or amygdala reactivity on fMRI — to see whether the two approaches are converging on the same physiological endpoint through different routes. That would help explain why two such different-looking therapies keep landing in similar territory on symptom scales.
| Design | Randomized trial |
|---|---|
| Participants | 46 people |
| Population | NHS Scotland patients referred for psychotherapy with DSM-IV PTSD |
| Comparison group | EMDR (active comparator) |
| Effect size | Cohen's d = 0.69 — on depressive symptoms (HADS), EFT vs EMDR; the recorded d=0.69 corresponds to the EFT arm's WITHIN-group pre-post change (derived from Table 2 means/SDs). The authors' between-group depression comparison was NON-significant (F(1,43)=0.3, p=.56). |
| Outcome measures | HADS |
| Journal | The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease |
| Year | 2011 |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Method | EFT / Tapping |
| Publication type | Study / trial |
| Verification | ✓ Confirmed against the primary source |
Karatzias, T., Power, K., Brown, K., McGoldrick, T., Begum, M., Young, J., Loughran, P., Chouliara, Z., & Adams, S. (2011). A Controlled Comparison of the Effectiveness and Efficiency of Two Psychological Therapies for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing vs. Emotional Freedom Techniques. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease. https://doi.org/10.1097/NMD.0b013e31821cd262
This record is part of the Tapping Evidence Base — an openly-sourced, fully-referenced directory of the research on EFT/Tapping. Explore more studies on Depression · PTSD & Trauma
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