Psychotherapy of posttraumatic stress disorder: A review of randomized controlled trials in 5 years / 解放军医学杂志

ABSTRACT

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental disorder that occurs after a traumatic event. The core symptoms of PTSD are intrusiveness of traumatic event, avoidance of trauma-related stimulus, negative change of cognition, hypervigilance, and extreme behavior, et al. PTSD is highly relevant to war The prevalence of PTSD ranged from 10%-13% among veterans who had combat experience. PTSD can severely impair individual function of work, family, intimacy and social life in a long time. The lifetime prevalence of PTSD varies from 1.3% to 12.2%. Therefore, finding effective treatment of PTSD has always been an important field in research. This article has a comprehensive review and summary of randomized control trials focused on PTSD psychotherapies in recent 5 years. The results indicate that 1) Compared with traditional exposure therapy and non-exposure therapy, prolonged exposure had some advantages in treating PTSD. Modified prolonged exposure (PE) is also effective to PTSD. 2) In trials comparing PE with traditional PTSD drugs, PE was non-inferior to drugs in treatment effect. 3) When compared with control group, PE demonstrated considerable outcomes in alleviating PTSD symptoms. In conclusion, PE is an evidently effective psychotherapy for PTSD. Efforts should be made in enhancing therapeutic effect and decrease dropout rate by innovating and improving implements, assessing patients before treatment, and carrying out personalized treatment, et al.