Emotion Regulation Enhancement of Cognitive Behavior Therapy for College Student Problem Drinkers: A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial

Abstract

This pilot randomized clinical trial tested an emotion regulation enhancement to Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) with 29 college student problem drinkers with histories of complex trauma and current clinically significant traumatic stress symptoms. Participants received eight face-to-face sessions of manualized internet-supported CBT for problem drinking with or without trauma-focused emotion regulation skills (Trauma Affect Regulation: Guide for Education and Therapy, TARGET). Both interventions were associated with sustained (at one-month follow-up) reductions in self-reported drinking frequency, drinking related impairment, and heavy drinking in the past week, as well as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and complex PTSD symptoms, and improvement in self-reported emotion regulation. The enhanced intervention was associated with significantly greater sustained reductions in complex PTSD symptoms and resulted in medium/large effect size reductions in days of alcohol use (versus small effects by CBT). Emotion regulation enhancement of CBT for college student problem drinkers with interpersonal trauma histories warrants further investigation.

Trauma informed interventions: A systematic review

“…Table 1 summarizes the main characteristics of the 32 unique studies included in the review, with one companion article [16] for a study which was later reported with a more thorough examination of findings [17] totaling 33 articles. More than half (n = 19) of the 32 studies were RCTs [17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35] whereas twelve studies were quasi-experimental [36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47] and one was retrospective study [48]. Thirteen studies were conducted in the U.S. [17][18][19]22,26,27,29,35,[39][40][41]45,47]; five in the Netherlands …”

“…Setting, scope, and delivery of intervention. Twenty of the interventions were identified to occur in an outpatient clinic/setting [19][20][21]24,25,[27][28][29][31][32][33][34]36,39,40,42,43,[46][47][48]. Four of the studies took place in a research lab or office [23,26,41,45], one study occurred in the community [17], and one study implemented therapy in three locations, two of which were outpatient and one of which was a residential treatment center [47].…”

“…Several other studies included 20 sessions or more [18,22,23,25,26]. The interventions were most commonly delivered by medical professionals, including but not limited to: psychologists or psychiatrists, therapists, social workers, mental health clinicians and physicians [16,17,[20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29]33,36,38,39,41,[44][45][46][47]. The articles frequently noted that the interventionists were masters-level-prepared or higher in their profession [21,23,[25][26][27]33,40,47].…”

Comorbidity of developmental trauma disorder (DTD) and post-traumatic stress disorder: findings from the DTD field trial

“…Treatment targeted to address trauma-related symptoms could provide a complementary or alternative approach for poly-victimized and poly-diagnosed children and adolescents (D'Andrea et al, 2012). Targeted therapies are emerging for these children and adolescents (Ford & Courtois, 2013) and show promise in observational studies (Dorsey et al, 2017;Harvey & Taylor, 2010) and preliminary efficacy trials (Ford, Grasso, Levine, & Tennen, 2018;Ford, Steinberg, Hawke, Levine, & Zhang, 2012;Lowell, Carter, Godoy, Paulicin, & Briggs-Gowan, 2011;Murray et al, 2015;Pfeiffer, Sachser, Rohlmann, & Goldbeck, 2018;Ruf et al, 2010;Spinhoven, Slee, Garnefski, & Arensman, 2009). However, these studies use a wide variety of clinical criteria and assessment measures to identify participants and monitor outcome, making it difficult to compare the findings and make progress towards evidence-based treatments.…”

Influence of Folk Artwork Appreciation on Self-Cognition of College Students

“…So the self-acceptance is one of the important conditions for an individual to acquire a healthy personality. Painting is a pure visual art and a form of folk art art (Ford, Grasso, Levine et al, 2018). Not only the painting process itself can express and release people's emotions and thoughts, but the painting appreciation can also make the viewer feel the symbolic information contained in the paintings and then resonate with the painter, which shall change and influence the psychological state of the viewers.…”