Edward Callus

Research

What I work on, and a selection of the papers.

Most of my research asks a single question in different settings: what happens, psychologically, to people who live with a serious heart condition, and what would it take for the health system to attend to it properly.

What I work on

Clinical case studies

Where the clinic meets the literature

A case study is the one form of publication in which the therapist's actual work is on the page: what was said, what was done, in what order, and what happened. I have published two as sole author, each written to the CARE guidelines for case reports, which require the patient's informed consent and a full account of the outcome measures. They are the papers I am proudest of, because they are the closest the literature gets to the room.

  • Remote eye movement desensitization and reprocessing for posttraumatic stress disorder in adult congenital heart disease: a clinical case study Callus E. Clinical Case Studies, 2025;24(6):409–426. doi:10.1177/15346501251386456

    A structured ten-session course of EMDR, all eight phases, delivered entirely by secure videoconference to an adult with Tetralogy of Fallot referred by her cardiologist. Symptoms of post-traumatic stress, depression, anxiety and insomnia were measured at eight time points with the PHQ-9, GAD-7, ISI and IES-R, and improved substantially across all four. The paper sets out the remote adaptations and the interoception-focused pacing so that the approach can be reproduced.

  • Provision of psychological support to a 31-year-old man with SARS-CoV-2-induced pneumonia during and after hospitalization: a clinical case report Callus E. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2023;20(1):757. doi:10.3390/ijerph20010757

    Twenty-two sessions over two months, by audio, video and text, with a patient whose condition worsened to intubation during the first wave of the pandemic, continued after discharge. Depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress and insomnia were measured four times, from moderate and severe at the start to no distress at the end.

Two earlier pieces of casework appear in co-authored form: a single case report on post-traumatic stress after inappropriate defibrillator shocks (Compare A, Del Forno D, Callus E, et al. Monaldi Archives for Chest Disease, 2012;78(3):160–166, doi:10.4081/monaldi.2012.122), and a case study closing a chapter on adults with congenital heart disease after cardiac surgery (Clinical Psychology and Congenital Heart Disease, Springer, 2015, doi:10.1007/978-88-470-5699-2_6).

Selected publications

A selection, most recent first. The complete record is on the institutional repositories linked below.

The complete record