ABSTRACT
On-line therapy offers many advantages over face-to-face settings. Interapy includes psycho-education, screening, effect measures and protocol-driven treatment via the Internet for clients. The present paper reports the results of a controlled trial on the Interapy treatment of posttraumatic stress and grief in students, gaining course credits. The participants in the experimental condition (n = 13) improved significantly than the participants in the waiting-list control condition (n = 12), on trauma-related symptoms and general psychopathology. The effect sizes were large. Eighty percent of the treated participants showed clinically significant improvement after treatment. The possibilities for future research with Interapy, including studies into moderating variables, are discussed.
Subject(s)
Internet , Psychotherapy/instrumentation , Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic/therapy , Adolescent , Adult , Female , Follow-Up Studies , Humans , Male , Therapy, Computer-Assisted/methodsABSTRACT
An Internet system was developed for assessing psychopathology, for on-line, protocol-driven cognitive-behavioural psychological treatment and for measuring the effects of treatment. The system focused on the treatment of post-traumatic stress. The treatment comprised 10 writing sessions (45 min each) over five weeks. Participants were assessed on-line before treatment, after treatment and after six-week follow-up. After treatment the participants had improved significantly in terms of post-traumatic stress symptoms (P < 0.005) and general psychological functioning (P < 0.005), and this was sustained during the follow-up. Nineteen of the 20 participants were clinically recovered after treatment. Reduction in post-traumatic stress symptoms compared favourably to changes in control and experimental groups in trials of similar but face-to-face treatment.
