There was evidence individual TFCBT, EMDR, stress management and group TFCBT are effective in the treatment of PTSD. Other non-trauma focused psychological treatments did not reduce PTSD symptoms as significantly. There was some evidence that individual TFCBT and EMDR are superior to stress management in the treatment of PTSD at between 2 and 5 months following treatment, and also that TFCBT, EMDR and stress management were more effective than other therapies. There was insufficient evidence to determine whether psychological treatment is harmful. There was some evidence of greater drop-out in active treatment groups. The considerable unexplained heterogeneity observed in these comparisons, and the potential impact of publication bias on these data, suggest the need for caution in interpreting the results of this review.
Treatment of PTSD: stress inoculation training with prolonged exposure compared to EMDR.
The effectiveness of Stress Inoculation Training with Prolonged Exposure (SITPE) was compared to Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). Twenty-four participants who had a diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) were randomly assigned to one of the treatment conditions. Participants were also their own wait-list control. Outcome measures included self-report and observer-rated measures of PTSD, and self-report measures of depression. On global PTSD measures, there were no significant differences between the treatments at the end of therapy. However on the subscale measures of the degree of intrusion symptoms, EMDR did significantly better than SITPE. At follow-up EMDR was found to lead to greater gains on all measures.
                Copyright 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.