Active-duty military find PTSD relief through individual cognitive therapy
The randomized clinical trial is the largest to date to examine an evidence-based treatment for active-duty military service members, with 268 participants from the U.S. Army's Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas. Findings will be published Nov. 23 in JAMA Psychiatry . The study analyzed the effectiveness of six weeks of Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), and found that nearly half the participants in one-on-one therapy improved so much they no longer carried a PTSD diagnosis. Almost 40 percent of the participants in group sessions also dropped their PTSD diagnoses after six weeks. "For some of the participants, you can see a change just by looking at them -- as though they have been unburdened," said Patricia Resick, Ph.D., the study's lead author, who developed CPT in the 1980s for victims of rape and other interpersonal trauma and is now a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Duke University School of Medicine. "Some people think you have t...