Active clinical trials for "Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic"

The admission of a loved one in an ICU is a hard experience for family members. They frequently feel fear and grief, develop anxiety and depression symptoms, or even show some behaviors as this event was a real traumatic one, like hyper-arousal, avoidance and intrusion in the daily life.To improve the communication between them and the ICU staff members, and to meet their needs in terms of medical comprehension and emotional legitimization, a specific website was built, and a brochure was printed to make them welcomed in the ICU; moreover, a series of poster was prepared for the family waiting room outside the ICU. These instruments appeared able to improve the correctness of prognosis comprehension and to decrease the post-traumatic stress symptoms in a multicenter study involving Italian ICUs. The proposal of the present study is to verify on a larger scale if these instruments can really ameliorate the empathic communication among staff members, without increase in workload, and to make less traumatic, for the family members, their experience during and after the ICU stay.

Reducing discomfort in the intensive care unit (ICU) should be beneficial to longterm outcomes. This study assesses whether a tailored multicomponent program for discomfort reduction may be effective in reducing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms at 1-year in general ICU survivors. The psychiatric morbidity may be increased by the COVID-19 epidemic and its consequences on the healthcare system (patient care, reorganization of French ICUs). The main objective of PTSD-REA_COVID cohort is to assess this psychiatric morbidity 6 months after an ICU stay during the epidemic period.

The project will develop knowledge on how managers can lead the implementation of practices that have proven to be effective for post-traumatic stress disorders (PTSD) in adult specialized mental health services. Specifically, the project will examine the intervention named the Leadership and Organizational Change for Implementation (LOCI). This is an empirically and theoretically based innovation for implementation leadership that aims to support leaders in their organizational work of leading the implementation of EBPs in their clinics. It is hypothesized that the implementation of LOCI will improve leaders' general leadership qualifications, their implementation leadership qualifications, and the implementation climate in the clinics. Further, the investigators hypothesize that training in trauma screening will increase the amount of trauma screenings, moderated by the LOCI implementation, and also that training in trauma treatment will increase the amount of patients to be offered this kind of treatment, also moderated by the LOCI implementation.

Background: International studies have shown that a substantial number of children and adolescents are exposed to potentially traumatic events. Many of these children and adolescents, some of whom will experience posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), are submitted to health care departments shortly after exposure as the most common types of traumatic events are accidental injury, serious somatic illness or death of someone close. There has been some research on early psychological interventions for prevention and treatment of PTSD. However, very little research has examined the efficacy of trauma-informed practice among health care professionals (HCPs). The present trial aims to evaluate and compare trauma-informed health care with usual practice. Methods/Design: The primary clinical question under investigation is the efficacy of an early, trauma-informed intervention for the prevention of PTSD in children and adolescents following exposure to a potentially traumatic event. The trail compares a standardized trauma-informed practice with usual care (no intervention) in health care departments receiving children and adolescents after exposure to determine if trauma-informed care is associated with a reduction in psychological outcome measures over time. Specifically, the investigators examine the efficacy of health care professional's active use of trauma-informed standards of action and a trauma training program for HCPs in the intervention group. The primary outcome will be a reduction in trauma, anxiety and depressive symptoms on self-reports in the active intervention compared to usual care. Discussion: This trial will be the first controlled trial to examine a trauma-informed intervention carried out by HCPs. It will provide the first evidence on the efficacy of health care delivered by trauma-educated HCPs using trauma-informed standards of action. A successful implementation of this protocol will support the thesis that prevention of PTSD among children and adolescents benefits from a focus on the practice of HCPs. If efficacious, the results will be a call for future research to extend the investigation of interventions from psychological treatment to HCP-based care.

The purpose of this study is to use functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate how the human brain learns to form associations between neutral and emotional stimuli. The study is based on the basic principles of Pavlovian conditioning. When someone learns that a neutral stimulus (such as the sound of a bell) predicts an unpleasant stimulus (such as a mild electrical shock), the neutral stimulus takes on the properties of an emotional stimulus. The investigators are interested in the neural processes involved in this learning in people with a clinical anxiety disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) provides care to 3.3 million Veterans living in rural areas, comprising 36% of all VHA enrollees. In 1995, VHA began expanding its system of Community Based Outpatient Clinics (CBOCs) in order to improve access for the geographically dispersed Veteran population. There are now approximately 900 CBOCs delivering a range of services to approximately 64% of VHA enrollees. While these CBOCs have dramatically improved access to first class primary care services, it has been more challenging to deliver specialty mental health care to rural Veterans. Evidence based specialty mental care practices developed for large VA Medical Centers are often not feasible to deploy in small CBOCs and thus not accessible to rural Veterans. Rural Veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) treated at CBOCs experience little to no improvement in their symptoms over time. A major contributor of poor PTSD outcomes is that trauma-focused evidence-based psychotherapy is not being provided to Veterans in the CBOC setting. Moreover, travel barriers prevent most rural Veterans from receiving trauma-focused evidence-based psychotherapy at large VHA Medical Centers (VAMC). Telemedicine Outreach for PTSD (TOP) is a technology-facilitated virtual care clinical intervention that is designed to enhance access to evidence based psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy. The VHA Office of Rural Health and Office of Connected Health and Telehealth Services intend to deploy the TOP intervention nationally. This project will lay the ground work for this national implementation initiative. The goal of this implementation project is to support the national deployment of the TOP intervention and evaluate its clinical effectiveness in routine care. The specific aims are to compare the cost and effectiveness of alternative implementation strategies to promote uptake of TOP and assess impact on access and PTSD outcomes. The project will be conducted at 6 VAMCs and affiliated CBOCs without on-site psychologists trained in trauma-focused evidence-based psychotherapy. The total anticipated sample size will be 600. The TOP clinical intervention is delivered by a virtual care team comprising a CBOC provider, and a telephone care manager, telepsychologist and telepsychiatrist located at the VAMC. The telephone care managers will coordinates care. The telepsychologists will deliver of trauma-focused evidence-based therapy. The telepsychiatrists will provide psychiatric consultation. The standard VA implementation strategy will follow standard procedures for deploy clinical practices in the VA include disseminating support materials, providing technical assistance and transfer funds to hire clinical personnel. The enhanced implementation strategy will add external facilitation to the standard VA implementation strategies. External facilitation will begin with an assessment of the current workflow at the VHA Medical Center and the affiliated CBOCs. The external facilitation team will then generate a clinical workflow chart that describes the current process of care. With advice from the external facilitation team, local staff will then incorporate the clinical process of the TOP intervention into the current clinical workflow chart. The project will compare the standard VA implementation strategy to the enhanced implementation strategy. All VAMCs will receive the enhanced implementation strategy if they need it, but the time period during which they will receive the enhanced implementation strategy will be randomized. This will allow us to determine whether more patients are reached by the TOP intervention during standard implementation compared to enhanced implementation. This design will also allow us to document improvements in perceived access and PTSD outcomes for patients at sites that successfully implement the TOP intervention. Data will be collected from patient survey and chart review for all patients sampled for the evaluation. Participating patients will complete a baseline survey and 3 follow-up surveys. The reach implementation outcome measure will be specified as the proportion of sampled patients who received the TOP intervention. PTSD outcomes will be specified as a continuous change in patient self-reported symptom severity between baseline and follow-up. Perceived access will be measured using items specifically developed for the project. Provider adoption will be assessed with qualitative interviews of all CBOC clinicians treating a sampled patient as well as members of the TOP intervention team. Costs - The investigators will measure the cost of both implementation strategies both prospectively and retrospectively. The investigators will collect data on implementation activities during both the standard VA and enhanced implementation strategies.

Due to an increase in PTSD patients seeking treatment in the Danish mental health sector and the addition of Complex PTSD to the ICD-11, there is a need to increase the effectiveness of existing treatments for PTSD. mHealth interventions have been shown to be effective in reducing PTSD symptoms with small to moderate effect sizes. Therefore, the implementation of a mHealth intervention designed for psychiatric PTSD patients as a supplement to therapy may increase treatment outcome. As no studies to date has explored the effects of mHealth interventions in the Danish mental health sector the feasibility and effect of this type of intervention needs testing. The study's primary hypothesis is that PTSD patients in a Danish psychiatric outpatient setting will want to use a mHealth application as a supplement to care as usual (CAU). The secondary hypothesis is that PTSD patients will benefit from using a mHealth application as a supplement to CAU The study is an investigator-initiated randomized controlled feasibility trial investigating PTSD help combined with CAU compared to CAU for adults with PTSD. Eighty patients will be recruited and receive either the mHealth intervention combined with CAU or CAU alone. Primary outcome is the ratio of eligible patients that agree to participate in the study and the level of user compliance. Secondary outcome data consists of exploratory data on PTSD help on PTSD symptom severity, level of psychological distress, sleep quality, dissociation symptoms, therapy readiness, quality of life, disability levels, recovery and rumination. This study may help increase the investigator's knowledge of possible benefits of, as well as potential barriers to, the implementation of mHealth tools. It may also provide a cost-efficient means to increase therapy outcomes and decrease the duration of suffering for PTSD patients in the Danish psychiatric sector.

As part of their work, emergency first responders, such as paramedics and emergency medical dispatchers are exposed daily to traumatic events. These traumatic events can have many impacts on mental health, such as acute stress disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. Research has shown that intervening early after exposure to a traumatic event helps to identify people at risk and to prevent post-traumatic stress disorder. The Psychological First Aid approach originally developed for mass traumas, is an intervention advocated by international experts today following a traumatic event. However, this approach is still very little studied, especially when it is part of an organization of emergency first responders. It therefore still lacks scientific validity. The main objective of this research will be to assess whether the Psychological First Aid program provided by peer-support workers helps to reduce the initial distress caused by traumatic events and to foster short- and long-term adaptive functioning and coping.

The study will focus on the modulation of intrusive memories via functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)-guided repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) directly after exposure to a traumatic video.

The principal aim of this project is to conduct a Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) to examine whether adding a twelve-session Multi-Component Yoga Intervention (MCYI) to the treatment regimen of Australian Vietnam Veterans suffering chronic Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) leads to a significantly greater clinical improvement than conventional psychiatric treatment alone. Include 12 sessions with each session 3 hours duration- 4 days per week for 3 weeks i.e. total of 36 hours. The Multi-Component Yoga Intervention (MCYI) consisting of specific poses, breathing techniques, information about yoga techniques and practices, group processes, psychoeducation, relaxation procedures and meditation techniques in Vietnam War Veterans with chronic Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) resistant to treatment has been developed. This project aims to evaluate MCYI through RCT method. It is hypothesised that Yoga augmentation will lead to: (1) reduced symptoms of PTSD and Depression; and (2) reduced alcohol intake. A secondary aim of the proposed RCT is to evaluate putative mediating variables. Benefits include that it is low cost and easy to apply. Done at home, non threatening and additional to standard psychiatric treatment for PTSD.