Supporting Parents: EMDR for the Trauma of a Child's Serious Illness

When a child is seriously ill, attention understandably centres on the child. But parents in this situation carry a heavy and often invisible burden of their own. Receiving a devastating diagnosis, witnessing frightening medical episodes, and living with the knowledge of what lies ahead can leave parents with genuine symptoms of post-traumatic stress, alongside exhaustion and the ordinary demands of caring. There is an obvious objection to offering trauma therapy in this situation. EMDR is designed to process events that are over. What use is it when the difficulty has not finished, and in some cases is getting worse? It is a fair question, and one a research team set out to answer. A randomised clinical trial by Thirsa Conijn and colleagues, published in the *Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases* (2022), worked with parents of children living with a rare, progressive, life-limiting illness who were experiencing post-traumatic stress symptoms. Parents were randomly assigned either to receive EMDR straight away or to wait six weeks and receive it afterwards. Recognising how little spare time these families have, the treatment was deliberately compressed: four sessions delivered across two half-days. The results were encouraging. All but one parent completed the treatment, and no adverse events occurred. The brief EMDR course reduced the severity of post-traumatic stress symptoms, other psychological symptoms, general distress, and parenting stress. The authors note these results are notable precisely because the stressful circumstances were ongoing. The study was small and conducted at a single centre, so it should be read as an early signal rather than settled evidence. A larger trial on parental PTSD related to a child's medical condition has since been published, and this remains an active area of research. The underlying point is worth holding onto. Distressing past events can leave their mark even when the wider situation has not resolved, and processing them can bring real relief. Parents in these circumstances often deprioritise their own needs entirely. This research suggests that a short, practical course of support can help, and that it does not require the crisis to be over first. *Source: Conijn, T., de Roos, C., Vreugdenhil, H. J. I., van Dijk-Lokkart, E. M., Wijburg, F. A., & Haverman, L. (2022). Effectiveness of time-limited eye movement desensitization reprocessing therapy for parents of children with a rare life-limiting illness: a randomized clinical trial. Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases, 17(1), 328.*