Errors in the 2017 APA Clinical Practice Guideline for the Treatment of PTSD: What the Data Actually Says.

The American Psychological Association (APA) Practice Guidelines for the Treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) concluded that there was strong evidence for cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), cognitive processing therapy (CPT), cognitive therapy (CT), and exposure therapy yet weak evidence for eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR). This is despite the findings from an associated systematic review which concluded that EMDR leads to loss of PTSD diagnosis and symptom reduction. Depression symptoms were also found to improve more with EMDR than control conditions. In that review, EMDR was marked down on strength of evidence (SOE) for symptom reduction for PTSD. However, there were several problems with the conclusions of that review. Firstly, in assessing the evidence in one of the studies, the reviewers chose an incorrect measure that skewed the data. We recalculated a meta-analysis with a more appropriate measure and found the SOE improved. The resulting effect size for EMDR on PTSD symptom reduction compared to a control condition was large for studies that meet the APA inclusion criteria (SMD = 1.28) and the heterogeneity was low (