Effectiveness of an Emotional Freedom Techniques program with recreational plastic expression on posttraumatic stress in school-age children institutionalized for abuse

Randomized trial👥 47 participants⚖️ vs. no-treatment/standard-care control (randomly assigned)Moderate rigor✓ Source-checked📍 Colombia

In plain English. This Colombian study combined EFT tapping with a recreational art-expression program for children living in shelters after suffering abuse, all of whom had post-traumatic stress. Nearly half the children who went through the combined tapping-and-art program no longer showed PTSD symptoms afterward, compared with about a quarter of the children in the comparison group. Because tapping was combined with an art program rather than tested alone, it's not possible to say how much of the benefit came from tapping specifically versus the art activities.

What they found

people took part

Post-intervention PTSD symptom scores differed significantly between groups (p=.002); 11 of 27 children (41%) in the experimental group no longer met PTSD symptom criteria, compared with 5 of 20 (25%) in the control group.

How the study worked

Who took partChildren ages 7-14 in state-run shelters in Colombia, boarded for abuse-related trauma and meeting DSM-5 PTSD criteria (27 experimental, 20 control) (n=47)

What they didIn a randomized controlled trial, participants were randomly assigned to receive tapping or a comparison condition, then measured and compared.

Compared withno-treatment/standard-care control (randomly assigned)

Measured withcustom DSM-5-based PTSD symptom scale, Subjective Units of Distress Scale (SUDS)

💡 Where this could help

Picture a child living in a state shelter after surviving abuse at home, with limited access to specialized child trauma therapists. If programs combining tapping with creative, recreational activities continue to help children in situations like this, shelters and residential care facilities could build affordable, non-clinical trauma support into daily programming — taught by shelter staff rather than psychologists, and eventually practiced by the children themselves — rather than waiting for scarce therapist referrals.

🔬 What to study next

For institutionalized children with abuse histories, the interesting next step is pairing the PTSD symptom scales with age-appropriate objective stress markers — cortisol sampled from hair or saliva, or actigraphy-tracked sleep — to see whether the reported symptom drop shows up biologically too. It would also be worth testing whether shelter staff, rather than psychologists, can be trained to deliver and sustain this as routine daily programming, and following these children over a longer stretch given how much is at stake developmentally.

The full record

Design	Randomized trial
Participants	47 people
Population	Children ages 7-14 in state-run shelters in Colombia, boarded for abuse-related trauma and meeting DSM-5 PTSD criteria (27 experimental, 20 control)
Comparison group	no-treatment/standard-care control (randomly assigned)
Outcome measures	custom DSM-5-based PTSD symptom scale, Subjective Units of Distress Scale (SUDS)
Journal	Psicología desde el Caribe
Year	2020
Country	Colombia
Language	Spanish
Method	EFT / tapping
Publication type	Study / trial
Verification	✓ Confirmed against the primary source

Read the original study →

Cite this study

APA

Trejos Parra, J. J., García Osorio, C. L., & Vélez Vitola, O. (2020). Effectiveness of an Emotional Freedom Techniques program with recreational plastic expression on posttraumatic stress in school-age children institutionalized for abuse. Psicología desde el Caribe. https://doi.org/10.14482/psdc.37.1.155.4

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 PTSD & Trauma · Trauma (other)