IADC Therapy: A Complete Guide
By Dr Tom Nehmy — clinical psychologist, IADC Therapist and Trainer, and lead author of the most recent controlled trial of IADC Therapy, published in OMEGA — Journal of Death and Dying (2026).
For more than twenty years as a clinical psychologist, grief was my professional blind spot - the one presentation where I felt I had nothing substantive to offer. I could support grieving clients. I could listen, validate, and teach coping strategies. What I couldn’t do was meaningfully lift their pain. Finding IADC Therapy changed that. I’ve since delivered it to many grieving people, I am now an accredited trainer to teach other therapists IADC, and I’ve led a university research trial testing whether it actually works. This page is my attempt to answer, in one place, the questions I’m most often asked.
What is IADC Therapy?
Induced After-Death Communication (IADC) Therapy is a very brief, intense, structured psychotherapy for grief. It was discovered in 1995 by Dr Allan Botkin, an American clinical psychologist working with combat veterans, who was experimenting with modifications to the trauma therapy known as EMDR. The core of the treatment is two ninety-minute sessions, usually on consecutive days, delivered by a trained mental health professional.
IADC Therapy exists to reduce sadness. That’s its primary job. But something else frequently happens along the way: the majority of clients report an after-death communication (ADC), a powerful sense of connection with the person who died - and I’ll explain that below. But the therapy is judged on the reduction in sadness, and it succeeds whether or not an ADC occurs. In this sense, IADC is something of a misnomer, because the name emphasises the after death communication, but really sadness is the primary focus.
How does IADC Therapy work?
IADC Therapy is derived from EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing), a well-established treatment for trauma. EMDR uses bilateral stimulation (typically guided eye movements, though tapping and other alternatives work too) to unlock and process the emotion attached to distressing experiences including specific memories.
Dr Botkin’s discovery was that a specific modification of the EMDR protocol, aimed directly at the core sadness of loss rather than at trauma, produced something he hadn’t thought possible: profound reductions in grief, often within a single session, and frequently accompanied by a deeply comforting experience of reconnection with the deceased.
By fully accessing and then processing the sadness, clients report significant and sometimes dramatic real-time reductions in their subjective sadness. When I ask a client to report on their sadness, I’m not asking them to judge how objectively sad it is that their loved one died, I’m asking them how sad they feel right now. In many respects, IADC is somewhat mechanical: many repeated sets of bilateral stimulation. There is no hypnosis and no suggestion. My job is to guide the processing and then get out of the way; the client’s job is to allow whatever happens next. ADCs tend to arrive when the mind goes quiet, when a client stops analysing, stops expecting, and simply lets any feelings or impressions come to them. This is also why straining for an ADC is counterproductive: the experience isn’t under anyone’s control, mine included.
I’ve seen sadness drop so far, so fast, that clients wonder aloud whether they’re somehow suppressing it. They’re not. And the change isn’t only a reduction… tears often shift quality mid-session, from the raw distress of loss to something closer to relief and tenderness. Twenty years of delivering conventional psychotherapy never showed me anything like it, certainly not from cognitive behaviour therapy, and certainly not inside a single session.
What is an after-death communication?
An after-death communication (ADC) is the perceived presence of, or communication from, a person who has died. If that sounds fringe, consider this: research suggests around 30–35% of the general population have experienced one spontaneously (Woollacott et al., 2022). Most people simply keep it to themselves, for fear of being judged, which sustains the false assumption that these experiences are rare.
ADCs were once dismissed as ‘grief hallucinations’. That label pathologises a natural and usually healing phenomenon, and it doesn’t match how experiencers describe them: hallucinations tend to be disjointed and stripped of meaning, whereas ADCs are typically vivid, coherent, and profoundly meaningful. Modern grief theory recognises ‘continuing bonds’ - an ongoing sense of connection with the person who died - as healthy and helpful, and ADCs powerfully support exactly that.
The IADC protocol substantially increases the likelihood that an ADC will occur, as part of a therapeutic agenda focused on reducing sadness. You do not need to hold any particular spiritual or religious beliefs for the therapy to work, and IADC therapists make no suggestion for how you interpret your experience. Sceptics and believers alike report the same thing that matters most: they feel better.
What is the success rate of IADC Therapy?
Here is where I can speak not just as a clinician but as a researcher. I led a clinical trial of IADC Therapy through Adelaide University, published open access in 2026 in OMEGA — Journal of Death and Dying, a leading international peer-reviewed journal in the death studies field.
Forty-three grieving adults completed the trial. Each acted as their own waitlist control: we measured their grief, sadness, and depression, waited a month, and measured again - confirming their symptoms were stable before treatment. They then received the standard two ninety-minute sessions on consecutive days, either in person or online.
One month after therapy, we observed very large reductions in grief severity and sadness. For the statistically minded, an effect size of d = 1.56, which in plain terms is among the larger effects you will see reported for any psychological therapy. Depression scores also reduced to a large degree. 79% of participants reported an ADC. Client self-reported acceptability of the therapy was extremely high.
Ours was the third controlled evaluation of IADC Therapy, following work by Professor Jan Holden and colleagues at the University of North Texas comparing IADC with traditional grief counselling, and it was the first to test both in-person and telehealth delivery. The research base is young - I’d be the first to say more studies are needed - but the findings to date consistently point the same way, and they match what Dr Botkin and hundreds of trained therapists observed clinically for nearly three decades. As Dr Botkin liked to say, the only problem with IADC is that it sounds too good to be true.
You can read a fuller summary and download the published paper on my research page.
How long does IADC Therapy take, and how long do the effects last?
The treatment itself is two ninety-minute sessions, usually on consecutive days, preceded by a brief screening process to ensure client suitability. That’s it. This is not open-ended weekly therapy.
In our trial, the large improvements were still fully present when we measured participants a month after treatment, and Dr Botkin’s clinical experience across decades points to lasting change. When we informally followed-up or debriefed participants in our Adelaide University trial sometimes many weeks or months after their sessions, the overwhelming majority indicated sustained benefit.
Does IADC Therapy work online?
Yes. This question mattered enough to me that our trial deliberately included online delivery - the first controlled study of IADC Therapy to do so - and the therapy worked. Sessions run over secure video call, with bilateral stimulation adapted so the therapist can guide it remotely. I now provide IADC Therapy online to clients worldwide, which matters for a simple reason: grieving people shouldn’t miss out because of geographical limitations.
Who is IADC Therapy for — and who is it not for?
IADC Therapy is appropriate when grief is the primary presenting issue. Because the method is so effective at unlocking emotion, unaddressed and unrelated historical trauma can get in the way of processing sadness, which is one reason thorough screening is essential.
The other thing we assess is readiness. Grief is entangled in love, and part of a grieving person may quietly resist feeling better, worried that reducing the sadness will reduce their connection to their loved one who died. Or that others will judge them for coping too well, or that feeling and functioning better somehow means leaving their person behind. If that’s you, be reassured: IADC Therapy doesn’t ask you to give up your connection to the person who died. What changes is the nature of that connection… the sadness loosens its grip, and what remains is love, peace, and a bond that continues. In our Adelaide University trial, we noted that prior to therapy, a sense of the continuing presence of the deceased loved one was correlated with sadness, however afterwards it was not. The bonds did not diminish, they changed.
IADC Therapy isn’t suitable for everyone. It can be very intense because it requires participants to step into the most painful aspects of their grief. Certain mental health conditions and certain medications can inhibit or complicate the process, which is precisely what screening is designed to identify and resolve.
Common questions
Do I need to believe in an afterlife for this to work? No. The therapy reduces sadness regardless of your beliefs, and you’re free to interpret any ADC experience however you see fit.
Is it hypnosis? No. There is no trance induction and no suggestion. You remain fully awake and aware throughout.
Will it make me forget the person I lost? Quite the opposite. Clients typically report feeling more connected, not less – and with less sadness.
What if I don’t experience an ADC? The therapy can still be very successful without an ADC. Reductions in sadness can be expected with the sets of bilateral stimulation and are not dependent on an ADC.
Where to from here
If you want to go deeper, you can read my observations from the therapy room, explore the published research, or read my book Inspired Life, Beautiful Death, which includes details of the trial through the experiences of nine of its participants.
And if you’re carrying grief yourself, the first step is simple: complete the pre-screening questionnaire. It takes about two minutes, and if IADC Therapy looks like a good fit, you can book a free, no-obligation 25-minute screening call.