The influence of EMDR on conditioned disgust

Abstract

Anxiety disorders are the most common mental disorder. There are many effective treatments for these anxiety disorders, for example eye-movement desensitization reprocessing (EMDR). However, return of fear is a large and common problem. A possible explanation may be that disgust, which plays an important role in acquisition and maintenance of anxiety disorders, is often neglected in current treatments. Following up on earlier research, this study investigated if EMDR is an effective treatment in reducing conditioned disgust with a more adequate control condition using a within-subject design. The results show that EMDR is successful in reducing vividness and emotionality of the aversive memory (US) but it does not translate to the conditioned stimulus (CS). The conditioned disgust ratings remained the same before and after intervention. Further research is needed to further optimize the research design and to make practical implications.