Until recently, only one study was published on cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in individual therapy via videoconference (Germain, Marchand, Bouchard, Drouin, & Guay, 2009); however, it only assessed the posttreatment effect. This study presents the follow-up of Germain et al.'s (2009) study. The main goal was to compare the effectiveness after six months of CBT for PTSD either face-to-face (n = 24) or by videoconference (n = 12). Each participant received CBT for 16 to 25 weeks and completed various questionnaires before and after treatment and at a six-month follow-up. The two treatments had equivalent levels of symptom reduction (Modified PTSD Symptom Scale: η 2 < 0.01, p > .05) and proportion of patients with a clinically significant change in symptoms (42% for face-to-face vs. 38% for videoconferencing, p > .05). Thus, CBT for PTSD via videoconference seems to be a viable alternative when adequate face-to-face treatments are less available.
CIHR Author Manuscript
CIHR Author Manuscript
CIHR Author ManuscriptCurrently, cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is the most empirically validated treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD); its efficacy was confirmed in two meta-analyses (Bradley, Greene, Russ, Dutra, & Westen, 2005;Van Etten & Taylor, 1998). However, access to state-of-the-art psychotherapy such as CBT treatment for PTSD is still limited and uneven. For example, it was shown that less than 20% of the hospitals in Canada had an anxiety disorders clinic and these clinics were mainly in urban areas (Swinson, Cos, Kerr, & Kuch, 1992). Similar situations can be expected in many industrialized countries. Access to these specialized services can therefore be problematic for individuals living outside major urban centers, and especially in rural regions. This uneven access to professional resources is also exacerbated by the fact that some people with severe or chronic problems cannot travel to the available resources for a variety of reasons (e.g., disability, avoidance behaviors, lack of energy; Riemer-Reiss, 2000).In that context, telepsychotherapy offered by videoconference constitutes an interesting solution. Videoconferencing is a technological procedure that allows individuals to see and hear each other on a computer monitor or video screen in real time. Hence, it enables individuals in different locations to interact simultaneously. Telepsychotherapy via videoconference can thus serve as a solution to provide these specialized services remotely, to mitigate the unequal distribution of resources, and to reduce the increasingly high cost of health care (Koocher & Morray, 2000;Riemer-Reiss, 2000). Moreover, telepsychotherapy opens up the possibility of offering psychological services to people who cannot travel to the places where the most effective health care services are located or cannot receive the services they need within a reasonable time period (Jerome et al., 2000). It can increase timely access to mental health care, while reducing t...
