From EFT Universe
Welcome to the EFT research pages. There are thousands of stories on this web site written by people who have recovered from a wide variety of physical and psychological challenges using EFT. While such anecdotal evidence is valuable in pointing to what EFT can do, rigorous scientific research has been required in order to establish EFT as an "evidence-based" method that can be used with confidence by medical and psychological professionals in primary care. These EFT research pages summarize the many studies of EFT published in peer-reviewed professional journals. They begin with an overview of the APA (American Psychological Association) definition of "empirically validated treatments," then describe how EFT meets those criteria, and finally, they organize published abstracts into Outcome Studies, Clinical Reports, Mechanisms Papers, and Review Articles. From the links at the top of this page you can jump to any of these sections immediately. Empirically Validated TreatmentsEFT Universe supports the evidence-based standards defined by the American Psychological Association (APA) Division 12 (Clinical Psychology) Task Force ("APA standards" for short). These define an "empirically validated treatment" as one for which there are two different controlled trials conducted by independent research teams. For a treatment to be designated as "efficacious," the studies must demonstrate that the treatment is better than a wait list, placebo, or established efficacious treatment. To be designated as "probably efficacious," a treatment must have been shown to be better than a wait list in two studies that meet these criteria, or are conducted by the same research team rather than two independent teams. The APA standards advocate that studies contain sufficient subjects to achieve a level of statistical significance of p < .05 or greater, which means that there is only one possibility in 20 that the results are due to chance. The current status of EFT as an "evidence-based" practice is summarized in this statement published in the APA journal Review of General Psychology: "A literature search identified 51 peer-reviewed papers that report or investigate clinical outcomes following the tapping of acupuncture points to address psychological issues. The 18 randomized controlled trials in this sample were critically evaluated for design quality, leading to the conclusion that they consistently demonstrated strong effect sizes and other positive statistical results that far exceed chance after relatively few treatment sessions. Criteria for evidence-based treatments proposed by Division 12 of the American Psychological Association were also applied and found to be met for a number of conditions, including PTSD." (Feinstein, in press) The State of EFT ResearchAll the published studies listed below are statistically significant. Many of them are randomized controlled trials or RCTs, a design generally regarded as the Gold Standard of research. EFT has met the APA standards as an "efficacious" or "probably efficacious" treatment for phobias, anxiety, depression, and PTSD. There are several definitions in the field of medicine (as distinguished from the field of psychology) of what constitutes an "evidence-based" treatment. One of the most useful comes from the US government's National Registry of Evidence-Based Programs and Practices (NREPP). It requires a standardized description of the method in the form of a manual and training materials, documentation that the treatment was delivered with fidelity to that method, the use of validated and reliable outcome measures, corrections for dropouts (such as an intent-to-treat analysis), appropriate statistical analysis, sample sizes sufficient to produce a probability of p < .05 or better, and publication in a peer-reviewed professional journal. EFT has been researched in more than 10 countries, by more than 60 investigators, whose results have been published in more than 20 different peer-reviewed journals. These include distinguished top-tier journals such as Journal of Clinical Psychology, the APA journals Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training and Review of General Psychology, and the oldest psychiatric journal in North America, the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease. EFT research includes investigators affiliated with many different institutions. In the US, these range from Harvard Medical School, to the University of California at Berkeley, to City University of New York, to Walter Reed Military Medical Center, to Texas A&M University, to JFK University. Institutions in other countries whose faculty have contributed to EFT research include Lund University (Sweden), Ankara University (Turkey), Santo Tomas University (Philippines), Lister Hospital (England), Cesar Vallejo University (Peru), and Griffith University (Australia). The wide variety of institutions, peer-reviewed journals, investigators, and settings that have, in independent research, found EFT to be efficacious, are one indication of the breadth of existing research results. The next frontier of EFT research is replication of the studies that have not yet been replicated, and investigations into the physiological changes that occur during EFT, using such tools as DNA microarrays (gene chips), MEGs (magnetoencephalograms), fMRIs, and neurotransmitter and hormone assays. The EFT Universe training and certification program is based on "Clinical EFT," a consistent and reliable protocol supported by this extensive base of evidence and clinical practice. Types of Reports: Outcome Studies, Clinical Reports, Mechanisms Research, and Review ArticlesThere are several kinds of research papers listed on these pages. The first is "outcome" research. These studies compare the medical or psychological outcomes of two groups of people with similar symptoms, or the same sample before and after EFT. Outcome studies measure changes in, for instance, pain, depression, or PTSD symptoms. While an outcome study is designed to answer the research question, "Does this work?" the second kind of paper asks the question, "How does it work?" With EFT having been shown in many outcome studies to work very quickly and reliably for a variety of ailments, researchers have become increasingly interested in the physiological mechanisms of action by which such rapid healing is possible. So the second category of paper you will find here is mechanisms papers. The third category of paper is the "clinical report." Rather than using validated numerical instruments to assess outcomes, clinical reports describe the use of EFT with special groups, such as people with epilepsy, veterans, children, refugees, or prisoners. They may present a single case. Finally, there are "review papers." These gather together all the published evidence about a topic, present it in a structured manner, and evaluate that body of knowledge. http://eftuniverse.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=18&Itemid=21 |