Page 121 - Post-traumatic stress disorder in adults with mild intellectual disability: Screening, assessment, and brief intensive EMDR therapy

Experiences with intensive EMDR and rotating therapists
Professional caregiver one (after therapy): “He was just looking
for excuses not to go anymore, to escape, in my opinion.”
Therapist three (after therapy): “He did the same thing [being
angry] with my colleague therapist. He was so inappropriate and
angrily pissed, he did the same thing with me... He chose me
[as his preferred therapist], but he also walked out angry on me
once... [For the next therapy session], I would have two people
there. I would not do it all by myself.”
After completing therapy, participant one spoke negatively about one
therapist. According to the professional caregiver, the participant exhibited
challenging behaviour during the session with this therapist, such as
verbally threatening the therapist: “I can kick you with these feet.” However,
according to the therapist and professional caregiver, participant one also
exhibited this behaviour with other therapists, even with the therapist he
preferred most. Despite his preference for this therapist, the sessions,
even with her, were unsuccessful. According to the professional caregiver,
participant one was mainly looking for excuses to escape therapy. Based
on the interviews, it remained unclear whether the rotating therapists had
a negative impact on the therapy process of participant one. Nevertheless,
the therapists noted that if therapy with participant One were to continue, it
would be better for multiple therapists to be involved because they would
then be better able to provide him with EMDR therapy. This suggests that,
although the rotation of therapists may have contributed to participant
one’s discontinuation of therapy, the therapists recognised that they could
only continue delivering the therapy through shared responsibility, which
is particularly noteworthy given that these therapists all lacked prior
experience working as a team
5
Discussion
Participants started Intensive EMDR therapy with a team of rotating
therapists with high expectations. While expectations were not always
met, participants reported mainly positive experiences with the therapy’s
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