The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the Department of Defense (DoD) have issued a clinical practice guideline (CPG) for the management of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and acute stress disorder (ASD). This CPG is intended to provide healthcare providers with a framework by which to evaluate, treat, and manage the individual needs and preferences of patients with PTSD and ASD, thereby leading to improved clinical outcomes. Below are key recommendations from the updated CPG:

• Engaging patients in shared decision making (SDM), which includes educating patients about effective treatment options.
• For patients with suspected PTSD, an appropriate diagnostic evaluation that includes determination of DSM criteria, acute risk of harm to self or others, functional status, medical history, past treatment history, and relevant family history. A structured diagnostic interview may be considered.
• For the indicated prevention of PTSD in patients with ASD, an individual trauma-focusedpsychotherapy that includes a primary component of exposure and/or cognitive restructuring.
• For patients with PTSD, individual, manualized trauma-focused psychotherapies that have a primary component of exposure and/or cognitive restructuring to include prolonged exposure (PE), cognitive processing therapy (CPT), eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), specific cognitive behavioral therapies for PTSD, brief eclectic psychotherapy (BEP), narrative exposure therapy (NET), and written narrative exposure.
• Trauma-focused psychotherapies that have demonstrated efficacy using secure video teleconferencing (VTC) modality when PTSD treatment is delivered via VTC.