Critical Appraisal: Emotional Freedom Technique - Essay Example

?Critical Appraisal Research question Is Emotional Freedom Technique more effective than Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing for reducing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder symptoms in Veterans? Introduction In comparing the effectiveness of the two treatment methods for post-traumatic stress disorders, the two researches use different research design and methodologies. They both try to achieve a measurable standard thereby making it easier to compare and contrast the mechanism of treatment and the effectiveness of each. Both the researches are primary researches implying that they involve the study of the actual sources of the information they thereafter compare thereby determining the actual effectiveness of each treatment methodology. Both the researches use both primary and secondary sources thereby developing a holistic understanding to the study areas. Primary sources refer to the first hand subjects of the research, which are the patients of the condition under investigation. From this subject group, the researchers determine the nature of the disease and the manner in which each treatment methodology differs from the other (Dawson, 2010). However, the two researchers carry out their researches independently without the knowledge of the other. Secondary sources refer to books and other pre developed literary sources that discuss the issues related to each of the treatment mechanisms. The two researches use such to develop conclusive understanding of the issues they subsequently investigate in their research designs about each of the independent researches. Additionally, both the researches are qualitative implying that they investigate specific characteristic features about their subjects. To gain numeric variables capable of mathematic representation, the researches use different statistical tools to convert the specific characteristic features into numerically workable variables with which they later use to compare the effectiveness of each treatment method. The researches therefore follow clearly segmented structure research format which each section or segment of the research addressing a particular topical issue about either the research or the topical research question. Emotional Freedom Technique The emotional freedom technique is one commonly preferred method that seeks to deprive the post-traumatic stress disorder of any emotional alignment and therefore create a void in them, which they later fill with new emotions. This process is however time consuming as it involves ensuring that the patients forget about their past experiences which is often difficult given the nature of the events that result in posttraumatic stress. The research alongside uses very appropriate research subjects, the research employs soldiers returning home from warfare in Iraq. The soldiers have had varied experiences, they fought, maimed and even killed. Furthermore, they have lived thousands of miles away from home and have not therefore had time for their families. A number of them have also witnessed their friends die while others missed death narrowly with broken limbs and various injuries. The grotesque experiences of warfare often drive former soldiers into madness a fact that validates the psychoanalysis procedure that the soldiers therefore undergo once in the country. Most soldiers often suffer from heightened anxiety and depression following the recurrence of the events of the war in their subconscious minds. The mind has a repetitive way of replaying the scary things especially when agitated. This inflicts fear and impulsive reactions from victims of posttraumatic stress disorder thereby substantiating the threat they present both to themselves and those around them. Post traumatic stress patients also have a higher tendency of suffering from other anxiety related complications and other opportunistic physical diseases and injuries. An effective treatment mechanism to posttraumatic stress disorders must therefore address such issues and provide a cost effective mechanism of addressing the other related complications and injuries. The research therefore monitors three hundred American soldiers by monitoring the effects of the condition on thirty-two soldiers; twenty-nine males and three females and uses a number of data collection methodologies to collect valid information about their condition and experiences before and after the inception of the Emotional Freedom Technique. The recruitment of the subject follows an effective online advertisement and subsequent recruitment and referral from clinics across the country. The online platform provides cost effective means of accessing subjects and even conducting research under shorter time scales. The huge number of the research subjects threatens the effectiveness of the research. However, a conclusive research conduct from such a big research sample is more likely to deliver results that are more accurate since it monitors the responses from a large number of people thereby providing systematic pattern that can apply to the rest of the post-traumatic stress victims by extrapolation. Furthermore, the choice to use the soldiers is more appropriate given the fact that soldiers undergo intense training to overcome such grotesque experiences, an experience that thereafter breaks down a soldier is indeed worth investigating. Besides the appropriate selection of subjects, the research uses a number of data collection and computation methodologies all of which combine to give a representative result about the actual situation. The commonly available data collection methodologies are observations, interviews and the use of questionnaires. The repatriating soldiers are spread all over the country and locating them therefore resents a challenge to the research. However, with the internet locating and interviewing them becomes easier. Each of the three data collection methodologies has their own advantages and disadvantages. Using a combination of the three eliminates the weaknesses presented by each of them thereby resulting in an accurate data giving the actual representation of the research subject. The researchers visit the different clinics that offer the emotional freedom therapies to their post-traumatic stress disorder patients. Furthermore, locating these facilities is easier owing to the fact that the research uses soldiers most of who live in barracks and therefore access to military health facilities. Combining interviews and observations gives the researcher an opportunity to assess the respondent and therefore make personal judgments on the responses he or she gives. The fact that the respondents are psychological patients makes the judgment process easier since one can easily determine the sanity of a reply depending on the nature of the question asked. To facilitate faster interviews, the research uses the internet and other computer related applications such as the social media to interact with other subjects. The use of questionnaires is more convenient than the two, the researcher therefore simply mails the questionnaire either electronically or physically to the respondent who fills it up and thereafter mails it back to the researcher. However, this method lacks validity as the respondent has all the freedom to manipulate his or her responses to fit his or her condition. This therefore makes the multiple methodologies approach more relevant since the researcher compares the results from each of the three methodologies to determine the consistencies in the responses and can thereafter determine a lie. The small number of subjects makes the research process simpler yet more exhaustive since the researcher observes every feature of the respondent to determine the types of responses they give. After the data collection, the researcher uses a number of computerized data management and tabulation methods to determine the consistencies in the findings thereby drawing informed conclusions from the research and makes valid recommendations from the results of the statistical tools. One of the tools is the SPSS questionnaire-codding tool; this enables the researchers to code their results into statistically computable data. The SPSS tool makes it possible for the researcher to code the details of a questionnaire into variables that they thereafter group together and observe the level of consistencies in their findings from every respondent. In collecting the data, the researchers used the most effective PCL-M and the SA-45 assessment tools, which provide ways of monitoring, and evaluating the responses from the respondents view, this makes it possible for a researcher to make accurate assumptions about the responded and therefore predetermine an accurate response before he or she says it. They use the tools to compare the ages of the respondents alongside their wartime experiences. They therefore ask their respondents to list a number of their most traumatizing experiences in the war. The tools help the researchers tabulate the wartime experiences and compare them to the prewar experiences of the soldiers (Dawson, 2010). The researchers therefore compared the responses of their research subjects before the test and after the test and determined differences in the level of consistencies of their responses a fact that attributes a significant amount of validity to the use of the emotional freedom technique in treating posttraumatic stress disorder. The following table lists the variation of their respondent before and after the tests. Additionally, the table provides a detail of the stage progress of the treatment mechanism. After three sessions of the therapy, subjects present different levels of the condition, which progressively reduces with the increase in the number of therapy sessions. Six sessions is the maximum number of sessions and therefore implies the end of the therapy. PCL-M criteria After 3 sessions N(%) After 6 sessions N(%) < 50 no PTSD 21 (70.0%) 26 (86.7%) ? 50 PTSD 9 (30.0%) 4 (12.5%) The study presents a number of strengths of the emotional freedom methodology, the thirty-two subjects had different levels of the condition and therefore required different periods to heal effectively. By the end of the session, only four patients out of the thirty-two still experience the post traumatic stress complications. The sessions occur weekly implying that the method also has a shorter time duration but promises an 88% efficacy in the patients. The four patients who still experience the condition after the session possibly had more grotesque experiences most of which they had not experienced before the war and had permanent reminders of their experiences in the war which included wounds, scars and even lost limbs or lost a close friend during the war. However, after the completion of the six sessions, the intensity of their memory lapses and post traumatic attack reduces considerably implying that they simply required more time and more therapy sessions. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing In validating the use of the Eye movement Desensitization and response method, the researcher uses a number of patients drawn from the psychotherapy branch of the National Health Service in Scotland. This body manages all psychological services in the region and therefore has the details of all psychiatric patients in the country. The research follows a number of ethical guideline principles since the researchers have an understanding of the ethical concerns of using patients as research subjects. Unlike the previous research that targeted expatriating soldiers, this research seeks to use any post traumatic patient who undergoes the Eye Movement Desensitization method in order to determine the effectiveness of the method. The Eye movement method has an eight-stage mechanism of analyzing the past, the present and possibly shape the future of the post-traumatic stress disorder patients. The method hypotheses that pathology is a consequence of unprocessed and distressing past experiences , the method therefore aids the patient reconstruct their pasts by concentrating most of their energy on the present a feature that if executed effectively prevents the distressing pasts from replaying in their futures thereby assuring the patients of a stable and stress free life. The method is detailed following eight stages all of which run on a finish to start system implying that a patient graduates from one stage of the therapy to the next. The stage system of the therapy makes it more exhaustive as a patient succeeds in the first stage before progressing to the next until they successfully finish all the eight stages thereby guaranteeing success for all the patients who undergo the eight stages successfully. The research used the random sampling technique to recruit its participants; they sent an invitation by letter to their participants after whom they recruited thirty participants aging between eighteen and sixty-five. All the subjects of the research suffered from the post-traumatic stress but following different past experiences. They therefore had a representation of the society, which consist of people with different life experiences. The participants had voluntary participation in the research process and were either former patients or those who had a significant amount of the therapy and were therefore stable enough to take part in a medical research. This is part of obliging with the ethical issues in conducting medical researches using patients. After the successful recruitment of the participants, the thirty patients underwent the therapy under three separate psychiatrists who thereafter recorded their findings and progress on the patients. The research ran for a period of eight weeks with each of the eight stages running for a period of a week with the patients having one hour of therapy per week under different doctors. The elaborate research period did not only represent the duration of the actual research but also allowed the researchers an adequate opportunity to sample and observes the different therapy methods used by each of the three doctors. The different approaches to the therapy promised different result within different time spans. It was therefore worth observing the outcomes of each therapy session with the different doctors as they each acted as a control experiment to their counterparts. The research used a number of data collection methodologies key among which included the use of interviews, questionnaires and observations to monitor the entire therapy process and to determine the stability of the respondents after the different research durations by each of the different doctors. Observations enabled the doctors monitor the state of the patients and the methodology of the therapy, this enables ease of comparison with other therapy methods used by other doctors in another scenario. Interviews and questionnaires enabled the researchers determine the mental state of the patients before and after the therapy sessions thereby determine the efficacy of the different therapy sessions available in the treatment of the posttraumatic stress disorder. The table below details the results of the research showing the state of the patients before the treatment and after the treatment through the Eye movement method. Measure Baseline Pretreatment Post treatment Re experience 18.3 18.0 10.8 Avoidance 24.1 22.0 14.7 Arousal 28.3 27.2 17.7 The research uses pre-treated patients a factor that explains the state of the patients before the treatment, which is below the baseline. However, after the eight-week therapy duration, the change is conspicuous in all the patients (Thanos, 2011). Comparison The different treatment mechanisms have their weaknesses and strengths most of which vary and often complement one another. The emotional freedom method runs for a shorter period and is less involving making easier to conduct. However, the research gives a less detailed view to the methodology as it selects its respondents discriminately. The Eye movement method is more organized and takes longer giving the doctors more time to monitor their patients additionally, the research contradicts differs with the emotional freedom, which used soldiers. The society comprises of different people and using a military experience to draw conclusions on issues affecting the entire society was not realistic. The eye movement method is arguably more effective than the emotional freedom method. References Dawson, C. ( 2010). Psychological Trauma in Veterans using EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques): A Randomized Controlled Trial, New York: Pergamon Press Thanos, . et al. (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, London: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. Read More