The efficacy of eye movement desensitization and reprocessing in reducing anxiety among female university students with primary dysmenorrhea

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Valedi, S, MoradiBaglooei, M, Ranjbaran, M, Chegini, V, Griffiths, MD ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8880-6524 and Alimoradi, Z, 2022. The efficacy of eye movement desensitization and reprocessing in reducing anxiety among female university students with primary dysmenorrhea. BMC Psychology, 10: 50. ISSN 2050-7283

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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-022-00757-0

Abstract

Background: Unpleasant experiences of dysmenorrhea can lead to increased anxiety. The anxiety associated with dysmenorrhea is a pain-related anxiety which might reduce the efficacy of medication as well as enhance the perception of pain. The present study evaluated the efficacy of eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) in reducing anxiety among female university students with primary dysmenorrhea.

Methods: In this randomized controlled trial, 88 female university students were recruited from April 2019 to February 2020. Eligible participants were selected by convenience sampling and were allocated into study groups (44 individuals in the intervention group and comparison group) using balanced block randomization. The final sample comprised 78 participants who completed the study (39 individuals in each group). Data were collected using the Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, Subjective Units of Distress Scale, and Validity of Cognition Scale before the intervention and at the time of the first menstrual period after completion of the intervention. The intervention group received EMDR in two individual interventional sessions which lasted approximately one hour. Data analysis was performed using analysis of variance with control of covariance method at a significance level of 0.05.

Results: The results of the study showed that EMDR did not have a statistically significant effect on State-Trait Anxiety of patients with dysmenorrhea (p > 0.05). Based on the Cohen’s d effect size of 0.06 for state-anxiety, -0.01 for trait-anxiety, and partial eta square less than 0.059 for both uncorrected and corrected models, the intervention was within a trivial effect.

Conclusion: EMDR intervention did not have a statistically and clinically significant effect on State-Trait Anxiety of patients with dysmenorrhea. Therefore, the efficacy of EMDR in treating dysmenorrhea-related anxiety remains inconclusive.

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	BMC Psychology
Creators:	Valedi, S., MoradiBaglooei, M., Ranjbaran, M., Chegini, V., Griffiths, M.D. and Alimoradi, Z.
Publisher:	Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date:	3 March 2022
Volume:	10
ISSN:	2050-7283
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1186/s40359-022-00757-0 DOI 1523078 Other
Rights:	© The Author(s) 2022. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
Divisions:	Schools > School of Social Sciences
Record created by:	Laura Ward
Date Added:	04 Mar 2022 10:04
Last Modified:	04 Mar 2022 10:04
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/45790