Effectiveness of short‐term specialized inpatient treatment for war‐related posttraumatic stress disorder: A role for adventure‐based counseling and psychodrama

Abstract

Psychological tests were administered to 24 participants of an inpatient posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) treatment program both immediately before and following completion of treatment. Responses were compared to a treatment/wait list comparison group composed of 24 subjects awaiting entry into the program. All treatment/wait list comparison group subjects received weekly PTSD outpatient group therapy. Significant improvements were found in the inpatient treatment group in areas of hopelessness, feelings of guilt and shame, loneliness, and emotional expressiveness. Other indices of psychological functional, including interpersonal skills, gender role stress, anxiety, anger, and PTSD symptomatology did not change significantly in response to treatment. No positive changes in any area of psychological function occurred in the treatment/wait list comparison group. Implications for PTSD and areas of future research are discussed.

How Best to Treat Deployment-Related Guilt and Shame: Commentary on Smith, Duax, and Rauch (2013)

“…The few studies examining this question suggest that a range of conceptually distinct trauma treatments can improve guilt, including PE, cognitive therapies, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), relaxation training, adventure-based counseling, and psychodrama, and that there are typically few differences in the effects of these approaches, whether used alone or in combination (e.g., Foa & Rauch, 2004;Marks, Lovell, Noshirvani, Livanou, & Thrasher, 1998;Monson et al, 2006;Ragsdale, Cox, Finn, & Eisler, 1996;Resick et al, 2002;Rothbaum, Ruef, Litz, Han, & Hodges, 2003;Stapleton, Taylor, & Asmundson, 2006). The necessary and sufficient strategies to redress guilt and shame are thus not well understood, and it appears that a variety of approaches may be at least partially effective.…”

Client‐centred therapy for severe childhood abuse: A case study

“…The small yet growing body of literature supports client-centred and experiential therapy as effective for adult survivors of childhood abuse and other forms of traumatic stress (Paivio & Greenberg (1995), Ragsdale, Cox Finn and Eisler (1996), Paivio and Nieuwenhuis (2001), Clarke (1993)). A recent study shows that client-centred therapy was previously used with clients who had experienced trauma through childhood abuse within institutional care (Wolters, 2008).…”

Psychotherapie bei posttraumatischen Belastungsstörungen

“…Verschiedene Autoren haben die Wirksamkeit von körperlichen Aktivitäten, Abenteuerprogrammen und Psychodrama als Ergänzung zu konventionellen Therapieprogrammen bei Patienten mit chronischen posttraumatischen Belastungsstörungen untersucht [33,52]. Bisher konnte aber mit diesen Ansätzen kein zusätzlicher therapeutischer Effekt nachgewiesen werden.…”