Author: Jon Finch

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CPT for PTSD in a Week

My guess would be that most clinicians would think that trauma therapy would take a long time. This case study shows otherwise. More on that below.   Why CPT in a week Previous research has shown that there are often practical barriers to attending therapy for PTSD. Browne et al.

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Therapeutic Drift – When therapy ceases to be therapy

Why should a therapist be concerned with Therapeutic Drift? As we drift away from therapy we also drift away from effective outcomes for clients. What is therapeutic drift Therapeutic drift is defined in many ways. Generally, it is when the therapist stops using therapeutic methods. It can also include when

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Attachment and trauma, do I need to do anything special?

As common sense might tell you there could be a link between trauma and attachment. This is highlighted in the literature (Cyr, et al. 2010: Tocker, et al. 2017 and Twaite & Rodriguez-Srednicki, 2004). The link between attachment insecurity and mental health difficulties is also in the literature (Mikulincer &

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What is the best treatment for PTSD? The jury is still out.

The first article written on this blog, was about exploring what might be the best treatment for PTSD. Five years later the conclusions are similar. Paula Schnurr, and colleagues (2022) compared prolonged exposure (PE) and cognitive processing therapy (CPT). They had a sample of 916 veterans with military-related PTSD. Participants

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The BPD-PTSD which to treatment first conundrum

In clinical practice being faced with co-morbidity is a common experience, and BPD-PTSD is one of these co-morbidities. The question of what to treat first or if co-morbidities should be treated concurrently was reviewed by a team out of Ryerson University, in Canada. Richard Zeifman and his team (2021) completed

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Therapeutic Alliance and Dropout in CPT

Most clinicians rightly assume that therapeutic alliance is part of an effective therapy. However, how it is effective is still a question to be answered. The link between an alliance and completion of therapy in the PTSD context is assumed to be important. Sijercic and colleagues (2021) examined Therapeutic Alliance

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Can I treat my client when they might be re-exposed to trauma?

This question was examined by Naomi Ennis, Iris Sijercic and Candice Monson in their systematic review: Trauma-focused cognitive-behavioral therapies for posttraumatic stress disorder under ongoing threat, published in 2021. Enis and colleagues highlighted that there is debate about using trauma focused therapy during risk of trauma reexposure when objective safety

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Over reporting PTSD symptoms? Can I help them?

To think that your client might be over reporting their symptoms may be sacrilege on many fronts for a therapist. van Minnen (2020) examined this potentially controversial area. They described that the assumption that clients are malingering or that somehow their overreporting would be a barrier to treatment has resulted

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Intensive PTSD treatment over two-week period

Intensive PTSD treatment over a short period of time has been shown to work and has been discussed in this blog earlier. This blog focuses on a study of  military members, that compared two well known evidence based therapies. Elizabeth Goetter (2020) and her team examined the effectives of Prolonged

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