Blog

Vicarious Traumatization will I get it? Part 2

As previously  discussed on this blog the concept of vicarious traumatisation has over time gone from a framework to a disorder, diagnosis and an inevitable outcome of working with traumatised clients. Halevi and Idisis (2018) have examined personal factors related to vicarious traumatization. It seems these are important. Halevi and

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Will talking about trauma damage the therapeutic relationship?

Common sense (of the clinical variety) tells us that a strong therapeutic alliance predicts better outcomes. The research indicates this is true in PTSD treatment (Keller, et. al.2010). Some therapist worry that discussing trauma undermines therapeutic alliance and leads to poor engagement in treatment. Chen, et al (2019) compared therapeutic alliance

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Evidence supporting intensive delivery of Cognitive Processing Therapy

The evidence base for very short-term, intensive treatment for PTSD is growing. Investigators from the U.S. National Center for Veterans Studies conducted an open trial of 2 weeks of daily CPT supplemented with recreation and psychoeducational sleep classes. Military Servicemembers and Veterans with PTSD or subthreshold PTSD (N = 20) engaged in 12 sessions of

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Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends

You might know the words from the Beatles or Joe Cocker, either way it is an important message about the significance of support. As common sense would tell us the same applies to those who are going through PTSD treatment. However, the kind of support is very important.  Should it

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Trauma therapy drop out more often than other clients?

Clinicians are often worried about their clients dropping out of therapy when they are treating trauma. Are the dropout rates for PTSD therapy worse than for other problems? The research seems to suggest that they are not. A meta-analysis led by investigators at the University of Texas examined dropout from

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PTSD is not a risk factor for heart disease

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, has previously been associated with major forms of cardiovascular disease However, research published in the Journal of the American Heart Association on the 13th of February 2019 shows that PTSD is not an independent risk factor for cardiovascular disease. The authors outlined that comorbid conditions explain the association

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Does CPT work?

A 2019 meta-analysis of 11 studies with a total of 1130 participants showed that CPT outperformed inactive control conditions on PTSD outcome measures at posttreatment and follow-up. The average CPT-treated participant fared better than 89% of those in inactive control conditions at posttreatment and 82% at follow-up. Reference Gordon J.

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Stabilisation in trauma treatment

When a client presents with complex PTSD (cPTSD), they often have high levels of distress, which may be difficult to manage. This has prompted experts to consider how to manage these clients. Guidelines have been developed, however these guidelines have since been questioned regarding their necessity and impact on client

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The Blame Game

Client presentation and choice of therapy is often a challenge for clinicians. There are often many facets of a client’s experience of PTSD. This includes dissociative experience, multiple traumas, chronicity, severity, experience of tonic immobility and self-blame. All these may be considerations in the choice of therapy. Research suggests that

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