Treatment of PTSD-Related Anger in Troops Returning from Hazardous Deployments

摘要

The specific objectives of this research were to adapt a cognitive- behavioral intervention (CBI) for the treatment of anger to specific needs of military personnel returning from hazardous deployments, and to conduct a randomized pilot study providing preliminary data on the adapted intervention. The Phase I open trial showed medium to large pre to post treatment effect sizes for CBI. In phase II, 25 participants were randomized to CBI or the control condition (Supportive Intervention, SI); 23 started treatment. A mean of 8.9 and 9.2 sessions were completed for CBI and SI, respectively. Sixteen participants completed post treatment assessments. CBI improved significantly more than SI on several primary and secondary outcome measures. Between group effects sizes were large, ranging from .78 to 1.22, and improvement was maintained at 3 months post treatment. Treatment conditions did not differ on PTSD symptoms. Ratings of audiotaped CBI treatment sessions showed high levels of therapist adherence. Limitations include the small sample size, the absence of females and the small number of minorities in the sample. Future studies are needed to confirm the efficacy of CBI in larger samples, including adequate numbers of females and minorities.