Generalizability limited?
Commenting on the research, Joshua Morganstein, MD, chair of the American Psychiatric Association’s committee on the psychiatric dimensions of disaster, said he was reassured to see participants achieve and keep improvements throughout the study.
Dr. Joshua Morganstein
“One of the biggest challenges we have, particularly with trauma and stress disorders, is keeping people in therapy” because of the difficult nature of the exposure therapy, said Dr. Morganstein, who was not involved with the research.
“The number of people assigned to each group and who ultimately completed the last follow-up gives a good idea of the utility of the intervention,” he added.
However, Dr. Morganstein noted that some of the exclusion criteria, particularly suicidality and substance abuse, affected the study’s relevance to real-world populations.
“The people in the study become less representative of those who are actually in clinical care,” he said, noting that these two conditions are often comorbid with PTSD.
The study was funded by the Department of Defense, the Defense Health Program, the Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury Research Program, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Office of Research and Development, and the Clinical Science Research & Development Service. The investigators and Dr. Morganstein have reported no relevant financial relationships.
A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.