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

Recent Veterans of the OIF/OEF/OND conflicts are presenting in VA care with high rates of: PTSD, depression, anxiety, and alcohol abuse, reporting significant difficulties with community reintegration, and dropping out of mental health care at high rates. Surveys of recent Veterans show that Veterans want the VA to provide mental health care tailored to their concerns and reintegration priorities. The VA is committed to providing personalized, proactive, patient centered care (PCC); but little research or intervention development has been done on PCC in mental health care settings and preliminary research indicates Veterans may lack the skills and knowledge to be active partners in PCC. This study aims to examine PCC behaviors in VA mental health care and, informed by this data, develop a brief patient centered mental health intervention that will help recent Veterans take the lead in their care personalization and support their functional recovery. Results from this study will demonstrate the acceptability, feasibility, and preliminary efficacy of this intervention.

Lifetime sexual trauma (ST) (i.e., behaviors that range from unwanted sexual touching to attempted or completed rape) is a significant social and public health problem among women Veterans. For women Veterans, lifetime ST can occur prior to, during or after military service. ST is associated with multiple difficulties and risks, including posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), intimate partner violence (IPV), and alcohol misuse. Providing an effective, integrated, and low-cost intervention that targets ST-related risks for women Veterans with lifetime ST would advance clinical care for these vulnerable women. This research will develop and assess a computer-delivered intervention (Safety and Health Experiences Program; SHE) that will provide a screening and brief behavior intervention for women Veterans with any lifetime ST. More specifically, the intervention, SHE, will address interrelated health concerns for women Veterans with ST (i.e. alcohol misuse, IPV, and PTSD). SHE will be designed to provide individualized assessment, feedback, and referrals for women Veterans with any lifetime ST. SHE will take place within a primary care setting. Primary care visits are frequent points of health care contact for women Veterans making the visit itself the ideal, and possibly only, opportunity to provide behavioral interventions. This study will lay the groundwork for a larger clinical trial of the SHE program in multiple VA primary care settings. If effective, the intervention, SHE, represents an innovative and low cost service for early identification and intervention that could be implemented nationwide with ease and speed to address the needs of women Veterans with lifetime ST. The long-term goal of the project is to make a significant impact on advancing health services research by introducing and testing a novel and potentially powerful service tool that may improve service delivery to address the co-occurring health concerns for women Veterans with any lifetime ST.

This study aims to investigate the effect of a pranayama focused yoga intervention on post-traumatic symptom severity in patients with post-traumatic stress disorder undergoing standard psychotherapy/ trauma-focused cognitive-behavioral therapy (TF-CBT). Therefore, short pranayama sessions of 5-10 minutes will be provided to the patients directly at the begin of each of standard TF-CBT unit, while the control group will get standard TF-CBT alone. It should further be investigated, whether pranayama can enhance the affective tolerance of patients with post-traumatic stress disorder towards the used exposure techniques of TF-CBT.

Women represent the fastest growing population within the VHA. Many are of reproductive age and experience mental health concerns. Women with mental illness are at greater risk for unplanned pregnancy and poor pregnancy outcomes due to factors related to mental health and mental health treatment. Similarly, mental health concerns (e.g., impact of pregnancy on mental illness, psychiatric medications and pregnancy) can affect reproductive life goals and plans. Reproductive life planning (RLP) interventions that include considerations and concerns women Veterans with mental illness face are needed. The investigators adapted existing RLP materials to create an interactive, individualized, client-centered RLP intervention designed to help women Veterans with mental illness develop a mental health-informed reproductive life plan and reproductive life goals (RLP-MH). The current study aims to determine if the RLP-MH intervention is feasible and acceptable to women Veterans and if it increases engagement in behaviors to address RLP goals.

The purpose of this study is to pilot a primary-care based mindfulness intervention for chronically traumatized African Americans screening positive for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and major depressive disorder (MDD) in primary care clinics within an urban public hospital. The study will utilize a randomized controlled trial (RCT) design along with a multi-method psychological and physiological assessment approach to establish the feasibility and acceptability of a mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) intervention for primary care versus wait-list control in African Americans with chronic trauma exposure and comorbid PTSD and MDD. Preliminary mechanisms of action associated with MBCT including emotion dysregulation and autonomic function will be evaluated. The data collection and 8-session group intervention will take place in primary care clinics within an urban public hospital serving primarily low-income, minority individuals (>80% African American).

This study aims to examine whether integrating insomnia and PTSD treatment will enhance sleep, PTSD, and quality of life outcomes. This is a randomized control trial comparing integrated evidence based CBT-I into PE (CBTI-PE) versus to a non-active sleep component plus PE (hygiene-PE) to optimize PTSD, sleep, and quality of life outcomes in 90 Veterans. Such benefits would further the VA's commitment to improving the mental health, recovery, and community reintegration of Veterans detailed in the 2014-2020 VHA Strategic Plan. Findings from the proposed study offer a unique opportunity to determine the malleability of mechanisms (e.g., Total sleep time, Sleep efficiency) that can improve recovery outcomes among this vulnerable population and to inform future treatment development and research. Improved PTSD, insomnia, and quality of life outcomes can decrease risk of chronic impairment and ultimately help affected Veterans live richer, more productive lives.

This study will take place over approximately 6 months and includes 3 assessment appointments (where information will be gathered, but no direct treatment provided) and 12 treatment sessions of cognitive processing therapy if eligible.

The overarching goal of this UH2-UH3 proposal is to work with the NIH Health Care Systems Research Collaboratory to develop and implement a large scale, cluster randomized pragmatic clinical trial demonstration project that directly informs national trauma care system policy targeting injured patients with presentations of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and related comorbidity. Each year in the United States (US), over 30 million individuals present to trauma centers, emergency departments, and other acute care medical settings for the treatment of physical injuries. Multiple chronic conditions including enduring PTSD, alcohol and drug use problems, depression and associated suicidal ideation, pain and somatic symptom amplification, and chronic medical conditions (e.g., hypertension, coronary artery disease, diabetes, and pulmonary diseases) are endemic among physical trauma survivors with and without traumatic brain injuries (TBI). Evidence-based, collaborative care/care management treatment models for PTSD and related comorbidities exist. These care management models have the potential to be flexibly implemented in order to prevent the development of chronic PTSD and depressive symptoms, alcohol use problems, and enduring physical disability in survivors of both TBI and non-TBI injuries; care management models may also be effective in mitigating the impact of the acute injury event on symptom exacerbations in the large subpopulation of injury survivors who already carry a substantial pre-injury burden of multiple chronic medical conditions.

The purpose of this study is to explore the functional and physiological effects associated with the use of High-resolution, relational, resonance-based, electroencephalic mirroring (HIRREM), as supplemental care, for symptoms of neurological, cardiovascular, and neuropsychological disorders. This is a non-randomized, open label, and unblinded before-and-after trial, evaluating the effect of HIRREM on an objective, physiological common denominator (heart rate variability, HRV), across a variety of relevant conditions, as well as changes in clinical symptoms inventories, to generate hypotheses and pilot data for investigation in future proposals.

This is a pilot, open trial of trauma-focused psychodynamic psychotherapy for LGBT-identifying individuals who meet for DSM-5 defined post-traumatic stress disorder and are interested in receiving a research psychotherapy intervention. A sample of at least 15 therapy completers will be collected.