Comparing the Effectiveness of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) with Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) on Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

Transcranial Direct Current Electric Stimulation (tDCS) is a non-invasive treatment. The purpose of the current study was to compare the effectiveness of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS), Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) on PTSD symptoms.

This was a double-blind, controlled randomized with pretest-posttest design. The statistical population included patients with PTSD in Atieh clinical neuroscience center and Baqiyatallah University of Medical Science (1396 to 1397), in which 44 subjects were selected using a purposive sampling method and then randomly divided into two experimental (EMDR=14, tDCS=15) and one control (n=15). Active and sham tDCS groups received bilateral active and sham stimulation (2mA) on dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) during 10 sessions. The EMDR group also received 5 sessions of EMDR treatment. The research tool was included the PTSD-Checklist for DSM-5 (PCL-5). The data were analyzed by multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA).

Symptoms of PTSD were significantly reduced in the experimental groups compared to the control group in the post-test and follow-up periods (P<0.05) While there was no significant difference between the two experimental groups in the post-test and follow-up stages (P>0.05).

The tDCS method can be used as a non-invasive treatment to reduce the symptoms of PTSD.