Comparing Imaginal Exposure and Imagery Rescripting in Treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

Modum Bad

Status: Completed

Conditions: Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

Treatments: Behavioral: Imagery rescripting; Behavioral: Imaginal exposure

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT00891098

2-Hoffart

Details and patient eligibility

About

The outcome of trauma treatment (Posttraumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD) may be influenced by which emotions that are predominant among current symptoms, e.g. fear, anger, guilt, shame. Different treatment procedures for processing traumatic memories may resolve different emotions. This study compares two different treatment procedures of working with trauma memories in PTSD treatment (namely, Imaginal Exposure and Imagery Rescripting) in order to test this.

Full description

The main objectives of this study are:

1. To assess the relative efficacy of the two procedures in inpatient treatment for PTSD
2. To assess whether the predominant emotions in the traumatic memories moderate the outcome of the different procedures
3. To assess whether theory-derived constructs mediate outcome and whether the mediating relationships are different in the two treatments
4. To provide a theoretical account of the two models
5. To psychometrically evaluate 3 new measures

Enrollment: 65 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 20 to 65 years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• DSM-IV diagnosis of PTSD identified as primary diagnosis
• Accepts withdrawal of all psychotropic medication

Exclusion criteria

• Extensive dissociative symptoms or current psychosis,
• Current suicidal risk,
• Extensive current substance or alcohol abuse, or
• Ongoing trauma

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Single Blind

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65 participants in 2 patient groups

Imaginal exposure

Active Comparator group

Treatment:

Behavioral: Imaginal exposure

Imagery rescripting

Experimental group

Treatment:

Behavioral: Imagery rescripting