Treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder in rape victims: A comparison between cognitive-behavioral procedures and counseling.

TLDR

Forty‑five rape‑victim PTSD patients were randomized to stress inoculation training, prolonged exposure, supportive counseling, or wait‑list control, each receiving nine 90‑minute individual sessions with a female therapist, with PTSD, distress, anxiety, and depression assessed pre‑treatment, post‑treatment, and at 3.5‑month follow‑up. All groups improved on PTSD, distress, anxiety, and depression immediately and at follow‑up, but stress inoculation training yielded greater PTSD symptom reduction than supportive counseling and wait‑list control immediately post‑treatment, while prolonged exposure produced the greatest PTSD improvement at follow‑up.

Abstract

Rape victims with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD; N = 45) were randomly assigned to one of four conditions: stress inoculation training (SIT), prolonged exposure (PE), supportive counseling (SC), or wait-list control (WL). Treatments consisted of nine biweekly 90-min individual sessions conducted by a female therapist. Measures of PTSD symptoms, rape-related distress, general anxiety, and depression were administered at pretreatment, posttreatment, and follow-up (M = 3.5 months posttreatment). All conditions produced improvement on all measures immediately post-treatment and at follow-up. However, SIT produced significantly more improvement on PTSD symptoms than did SC and WL immediately following treatment. At follow-up, PE produced superior outcome on PTSD symptoms. The implications of these findings and direction for treatment and future research are discussed.