Testing the Effectiveness of a Therapist-Assisted Self-Management Program for Veterans Who Finished PTSD Therapy (EMPOWER)

VA Office of Research and Development

Status: Invitation-only

Conditions: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder; PTSD

Treatments: Behavioral: EMPOWER; Other: Treatment As Usual

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other U.S. Federal agency

Identifiers

NCT05797441

IIR 20-102

Details and patient eligibility

About

Patients who complete prolonged exposure and cognitive processing therapy, the treatments for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) with the most empirical support, continue to express a need for mental health treatment. A therapist-assisted self-management program for patients who have completed one of these two treatments and achieved symptom improvement has the potential to meet patients' stated treatment needs, maintain or build upon their PTSD symptom reductions, increase their confidence in managing their symptoms, and reduce the number of mental health appointments that they need to attend. Further, reducing the number if mental health sessions attended by completers of these time and resource intensive psychotherapies will increase the likelihood that their implementation in regular-practice clinics will be maintained.

Full description

Background. Nearly 90% of Veterans who complete trauma-focused therapy (TFT) for PTSD have remaining treatment needs. In the six-months following TFT, successful completers remain some of the highest utilizers of VA mental health services despite clinically meaningful symptom improvement. Prior work demonstrated that Veterans who benefitted from TFT's primary post-TFT treatment needs were the practice and application of skills learned during therapy, with the goal of maintaining or building upon treatment gains. Veterans expressed low self-efficacy for meeting these goals without the support of their therapists and feared stagnation or relapse without ongoing contact. As such, a therapist-assisted self-management program for TFT completers (EMPOWER) designed as a step down from active psychotherapy was developed and feasibility tested. The feasibility open trial demonstrated that EMPOWER is feasible and highly acceptable to patients. Further, findings suggest that the intervention was successful in helping Veterans maintain or enhance PTSD-related gains while reducing their mental health service utilization. These promising findings warrant a randomized evaluation.

Significance. Interventions that meet Veterans' post-TFT treatment needs are urgently needed. Mental health providers are delivering ongoing treatment to this high priority cohort of Veterans without evidence to guide their treatment plan. Further, higher than expected levels of post-TFT mental health care utilization threatens the continued implementation of these highly effective treatments. For all Veterans to have access to the most effective treatments for PTSD, interventions that prepare and enable successful TFT completers to step down from active therapy must evaluated and implemented.

Innovation. The proposed study is the first large-scale study of post-TFT care and the first to rigorously evaluate a self-management program to step-down from active to maintenance mental health services following a course of active psychotherapy.

Specific Aims: 1) Estimate posterior probability distributions of EMPOWER's effects and establish likely ranges for those effects as compared to post-TFT TAU for Veterans' MH service utilization and self-reported PTSD symptoms. The subsequent Hybrid RCT will be designed after assessing the likelihood of detecting an effect for EMPOWER across a range of sample sizes using Go/No Go and Overall Power methods. 2) Explore the impact of EMPOWER compared to post-TFT TAU on Veterans'(a) self-efficacy for managing PTSD symptoms, (b) satisfaction with post-TFT care, (c) well-being & functioning (d) depression, and (e) secondary utilization outcomes. 3) Conduct semi-structured interviews with Veterans and providers to contextualize quantitative findings and identify potential barriers, facilitators, and strategies to facilitate future implementation of EMPOWER.

Methodology: The study is a pragmatic randomized control trial (RCT) in which 36 PE and CPT providers will be randomized to support Veterans as they participate in the EMPOWER self-management program or facilitate TAU. Participants will be patients of the study providers who recently completed a course of PE/CPT during which they experienced clinically meaningful reductions in PTSD symptoms (n=90). Primary outcomes will be mental health service utilization (overall and with PE/CPT providers) and self-reported PTSD symptoms measured four times over a 9-month period. Qualitative interviews with providers (n=18) and Veterans (n=24) focused on providers' impressions of treatment effectiveness, implementation challenges/potential strategies, and Veterans' perception of treatment effectiveness.

Enrollment: 90 estimated patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Patients will be eligible to participate if they:

  1. complete a course of individually-delivered TFT with a study therapist at a participating site
  2. experience a clinically meaningful change in PTSD symptomology
  3. at the time of enrollment (in either the TAU or EMPOWER arm), are not planning to initiate another weekly psychotherapy for PTSD for another mental or psychosocial condition within 3 months
  4. are willing to receive to either arm
  5. provide informed consent

Exclusion criteria

• Patients will be excluded if they report suicidal ideation that requires clinical monitoring at baseline

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Single Blind

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90 participants in 2 patient groups

EMPOWER

Experimental group

Description:

The goals of EMPOWER are to increase patients' self-efficacy for managing their PTSD, enable the maintenance or building upon gains made in TFT through the continued application of TFT skills, and encourage engagement in meaningful life activities. The program includes a Veteran workbook and four planned therapist contacts over the twelve weeks following TFT completion. The intervention includes: self-monitoring of symptoms, continued practice of TFT skills, engagement in meaningful activities, goal setting, and therapist support.

Treatment:

Behavioral: EMPOWER

Treatment As Usual

Active Comparator group

Description:

The comparison condition will be TAU following completion of TFT. In the spirit of TAU, providers will not be restricted in the type or intensity of services offered. Depending on local clinic policy or norms, providers randomized to TFT may provide post-TFT treatment themselves or Veterans may be referred to other providers and/or back to the clinician who referred the Veteran to TFT. If providers would have typically discharged Veterans following TFT, that is also allowable.

Treatment:

Other: Treatment As Usual