Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Spread the Word: Effective Treatments for PTSD

Psychotherapy for posttraumatic stress disorder
Williams, Monnica T., Cahill, Shawn P. & Foa, Edna B.

This chapter reviews psychotherapy for posttraumatic stress disorder.

There are at least four treatment approaches that have empirical support for posttraumatic stress disorder - all forms of cognitive behavioral therapy; these include exposure therapy, cognitive therapy, SIT, and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing.

Cognitive-behavioral therapy has been shown to significantly reduce symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder from a wide variety of traumas, including combat, natural disasters, sexual assault, nonsexual physical assault, childhood abuse, and a combination of traumas.

Prolonged exposure, a specific cognitive-behavioral exposure therapy program, is currently the best-supported approach to treatment. Concerns about this approach linger, despite evidence of safety and tolerability comparable to that of other forms of cognitive-behavioral therapy. Prolonged exposure is a relatively short-term treatment that can be administered effectively by clinicians who have limited experience with cognitive-behavioral therapy. An important challenge at the present time is disseminating information about effective treatment programs.

Source: Stein, Dan J.; Hollander, Eric; Rothbaum, Barbara O. (2010). Textbook of anxiety disorders (2nd ed.). (pp. 603-626). Arlington, VA, US: American Psychiatric Publishing, Inc.. xxiv, 798 pp.

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