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Deepak Chopra, MD
"EFT offers great healing benefits."
EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques®) Where emotional relief brings physical health
Self help method often works where nothing else will No Drugs Involved ~ High Success Rate
EFT Research
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. The EFT research pages describe the many studies of EFT published in peer-reviewed professional journals. They begin with an overview of the APA (American Psychological Association) standards for "empirically validated treatments," continue with an explanation of the concept of statistical significance, then describe the current status of EFT research, and finally, organize abstracts of the large body of EFT research into Outcome Studies, Clinical Reports, Mechanisms Papers, and Review Articles. EFT supports the evidence-based standards defined by the American Psychological Association (APA). APAs Division 12 (Clinical Psychology) task force defines 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. When researchers speak of the "size" of a study they may not mean how many participants the study contained, but instead the size of the statistical significance obtained. The size of the significance is far more important in research than the number of subjects (the APA Task Force report found the mean number of subjects in each group in behavioral studies to be only 12). When a treatment has big effects, it can be demonstrated with just a few subjects; a weak treatment requires a great many subjects to achieve statistical significance at the p < .05 level. You can picture this by imagining two studies of cars. The first asks the research question, "How many times does a wheel have to rotate against the road in order to wear down the tires by a centimeter?" This requires many thousands of rotations (subjects) to give a p < .05 effect size, because each rotation has only a tiny effect. Compare it to another study which asks the question, "Does removing a car's battery make it hard to start?" You only need to do this with a very few cars (subjects) to get a statistically significant p < .05, because removing the battery has a huge effect. A bigger effect shows up as a smaller p value; a study with p < .0001 means that there is only one possibility in 1,000 that the results are due to chance. All the published studies listed below have effects at the p < .05 level or better. EFT has met the APA standards as an "efficacious" or "probably efficacious" treatment for phobias, anxiety, depression, and PTSD. While many important EFT research questions remain to be answered, a great deal of groundwork is already in place: EFT has been researched in more than 7 countries, by more than 50 investigators, whose results have been published in more than 15 different peer-reviewed journals, including top-tier journals such as Journal of Clinical Psychology and the APA journals Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training and Review of General Psychology. 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 Army Medical Center (USUHS), to Texas A&M 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. There 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 people before and after EFT. Outcome studies measure changes in, for instance, pain, depression, or PTSD symptoms. An outcome study measures the successful outcome of treatment. 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 kind of paper you will find here are 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, 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. For convenience, and to organize the large number of studies referenced on this site, outcome studies are presented first, by the condition for which data was collected, e.g. Depression, Pain, etc. The titles of studies are listed below the heading. If you click on a title, you jump to the paper's abstract, and if available, the full text of the paper, or a location online where you can obtain it. A PTSD study might have also collected data on pain; if so, the study will appear under both headings. The abstract tells you the treatment protocol, number of subjects, assessments used, change in symptoms, and statistical significance. Below outcome studies, clinical reports, mechanisms papers, and review articles are listed. All the studies listed at the top of this page have been published in peer-reviewed professional journals, are in press, or have been submitted for publication. Some papers have been presented at professional conferences or informally circulated; these are listed in a separate section at the bottom of the page, since they have not met the rigorous standards inherent in peer review, in which committees of reviewers, usually doctors, psychologists, and statisticians, examine every statement and statistic in a study to make sure that it is correct and credible, and meets the prevailing standards of evidence-based research prior to publication. Many of these studies have been performed by a team of dedicated volunteers at Soul Medicine Institute. A great need exists for money and expertise to perform the next level of research on EFT, to pay for gene chips, lab tests, and data analysis. If you would like to make a tax-deductible donation or bequest to EFT research, you may do so here through the Soul Medicine Institute web site. EFT Info and Disclaimer Document. Outcome StudiesOutcome studies compare outcomes, e.g. levels of pain, degree of depressive symptoms, either between two groups, or between the same people before and after EFT. The headings below tell you, in alphabetical order, the conditions for which data was gathered in the trials below them. Anxiety
Athletic Performance
Depression
Pain & Physical Symptoms
Phobias
PTSD
Weight Loss & Cravings
Clinical ReportsClinical Reports describe the use of EFT with various groups, e.g. university students, prisoners, refugees, or abused children. They may contain quantitative data, e.g. scores on symptom assessments, or they may describe the ways in which practitioners can work with this population.
Mechanisms PapersThe "mechanisms of action" for a technique such as EFT describe what is happening in the body during application of the technique. These papers describe the neurological, epigenetic, psychoneuroimmunological, and hormonal pathways that are believed to be active during EFT sessions.
Review ArticlesReview articles gather all the evidence for a method, such as EFT, or a condition, such as phobias, PTSD, or pain. They review the studies that have been completed, and draw general conclusions about the characteristics of the method. A number of review articles of EFT and/or Energy Psychology have been published in peer-reviewed journals in recent years:
Studies Presented at Professional Conferences or Informally PresentedThese studies have been presented at professional conferences, or informally presented such as in books. They have not been peer reviewed and are thus not to be relied on for the empirical rigor that the review process brings. They should be regarded as suggestive only. Studies Presented at Professional Conferences
Informal and Unpublished Research
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