EMDR Europe: Early psychotherapeutic intervention after childbirth trauma: comparison between EMDR and Supportive Expressive Dynamic Psychotherapy

About 30% of women evaluate their childbirth as traumatic and 3-4% women could develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in response to traumatic childbirth. There is also a high co-morbidity between post-traumatic stress symptoms and post-partum depressive symptoms The present study starts from the experience already obtained by a previous study conducted by Fumagalli, Cattaneo, Chiorino et al., that developed a specific EMDR protocol to treat childbirth trauma and showed that EMDR is a viable and well-accepted intervention in these context. The aims of the present research project are to improve the research design and implement some innovative aspects, as follows: - increasing the number of women involved, therefore enrolling patients in three of the main maternity wards in northern Italy; - including a screening also for postpartum depressive symptoms, as one of the possible inclusion criteria of the study; -including a clinician-rated structured interview (i.e. MINI-Plus) at the follow-up assessment in order to evaluate differences between the two types of psychotherapeutic interventions in preventing the onset of PTSD and Post-partum Depression diagnoses; - analyzing the differences between the two types of intervention (EMDR and Supportive Expressive Dynamic Psychotherapy) not only with psychological variables (i.e. clinical questionnaires) but also with a monitoring of physiological variables during the psychotherapeutic sessions, analyzing Autonomic Nervous System parameters (i.e. Heart Rate Variability and Skin conductance). In fact, post-traumatic stress and depressive symptoms have been linked to altered Heart-Rate Variability (HRV; Tan et al., 2011; Dennis et al., 2014; Valenza et al., 2014). To date no study has compared EMDR and SEDP in treating post-traumatic and depression symptoms from a psychophysiological perspective. Therefore the aims of the present research project are: - to investigate the effectiveness of EMDR therapy in treating post-traumatic and post-partum depressive symptoms in women who have just experienced a traumatic childbirth as compared to Supportive Expressive Dynamic Psychotherapy (SEDP), in order to prove the role of EMDR as an elective intervention also in this specific population; - to evaluate the differences between EMDR and SEDP in preventing the onset of PTSD and Post-partum Depression diagnoses after three-months post-partum; - to evaluate the effectiveness of EMDR and SEDP on associated anxiety symptoms and on mother-child bonding both after the treatment and at the follow-up evaluation; - to compare the effects of EMDR and SEDP on physiological indexes (i.e. HRV and skin conductance) measured during the treatment sessions; - to evaluate if these physiological indexes could predict the treatments outcome (e.g. respondents vs. non respondents).