Shikha Verma, MD, FAPA Medical Director, Northern California Evolve Treatment Centers Danville, CaliforniaAssistant Professor Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science North Chicago, Illinois
Disclosures The authors report no financial relationships with any companies whose products are mentioned in this article, or with manufacturers of competing products.
Stress inoculation training (SIT)provides psychoeducation, skills training, role-playing, deep muscle relaxation, paced breathing, and thought stopping. Emphasis is on coaching skills to alleviate anxiety, fear, and symptoms of depression associated with trauma. In SIT, exposures to traumatic memories are indirect (eg, role play), compared with PE, where the exposures are direct.25
The American Psychological Association conditionally recommended several other forms for psychotherapy for treating patients with PTSD26:
Brief eclectic psychotherapy uses CBT and psychodynamic approaches to target feelings of guilt and shame in 16 sessions.27
Narrative exposure therapyconsists of4 to 10 group sessions in which individuals provide detailed narration of the events; the focus is on self-respect and personal rights.27
Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) is a 6- to 12-session, 8-phase treatment that uses principles of accelerated information processing to target nonverbal expression of trauma and dissociative experiences. Patients with PTSD are suggested to have disrupted rapid eye movements. In EMDR, patients follow rhythmic movements of the therapist’s hands or flashed light. This is designed to decrease stress associated with accessing trauma memories, the emotional/physiologic response from the memories, and negative cognitive distortions about self, and to replace negative cognition distortions with positive thoughts about self.25,27
