Eye-Movement Desensitization and Post-Traumatic Syndroms

Emergency department are a privileged service for patients suffering from trauma and stressful medical conditions. In France, every year 10 million people come or are taken to the emergency department (ED). Many studies have shown that 10-20% of these trauma patients develop a non-specific set of symptoms that can persist for several months after ED assessment. These includes, for example, headache, memory and/or concentration impairment, stress intolerance, irritability... These symptoms lead to an alteration in the quality of social, family and professional life, and therefore affect one to two millions people in France alone. The association between these symptoms and mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI) has already been demonstrated. It was defined as post-concussion syndrome (PCS) according to the DSM-IV-TR. However, several recent studies have shown that these symptoms are not specific to MTBI but may appear for any type of trauma and event for stressful medical conditions. PCS seems to appear for events occurring in a stressful environment or in people with psychological weaknesses. These symptoms will therefore be referred here to Post-concussion-like symptoms (PCLS). Moreover, PCLS appear to be very similar and sometime overlap those of the numbing and hyperarousal dimension of the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). A recent study, carried out by our team in the ED of Bordeaux University Hospital, showed that PCLS was associated with a high level of stress at ED discharge, whatever that stress level at entry. The Eye-Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a recognized psychotherapeutic approach in the treatment of PTSD and several single-session versions of the protocol have been proposed : one of them is Recent Traumatic Episode Protocol EMDR (R-TEP EMDR).The investigators hypothesize that the introduction of an early R-TEP EMDR intervention in emergencies can reduce the level of stress and thus the occurrence of the PCLS and PTSD symptoms among a subset of patients screened for their high risk of PCLS. The study is a two-site open-label two-group randomized controlled trial designed to assess the efficacy of an early R-TEP EMDR intervention performed in the ED by comparing PCLS and PTSD symptoms at 3 and 12 months between the two randomization groups: (i) R-TEP EMDR; (ii) care as usual.