Active clinical trials for "Stress Disorders, Traumatic"

Neuropsychological studies investigating trauma-exposed and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) subjects have generally underlined the significantly poorer performance of tasks that require attention, concentration, and verbal memory, and difficulty in regulating memories surrounding the traumatic event. A previous study (El Hage et al. Cognitive Neuropsychiatry, 2006) revealed that the trauma-exposed subjects scored higher on anxiety/depression scales, and lower on processing speed tests. Moreover, the study showed significant impairment in working memory partially mediated by speed processing, but not by anxiety or depression. These results suggest that processing speed makes a major contribution to trauma-related working memory decline, and needs to be investigated in further studies.The aim of the present study is to explore correlation between hippocampus volume, frontal dysfunction and cognitive slowing in trauma-exposed subjects, while examining brain activation during performance of working memory tasks using functional magnetic resonance.

Nursing home staff face multiple stresses during the Covid-19 pandemic including personal risk of infection, risk of transmission of the virus to residents and relatives, and risk of witnessing end-of-life scenarios under difficult contexts (absence of families). The hypothesis of this study is that the Covid-19 period is associated with an incidence of more than 30% of post-traumatic stress in nursing home staff.

The fight against the scarcity of grafts is a major public health issue in France. Despite a very good success rate of transplants from brain-dead donors or living donors, the waiting time for transplantation continues to increase, leading to morbidity and mortality, as well as medical costs. Since 2005, the BioMedicine Agency has implemented a protocol authorizing kidney and liver samples taken from deceased donors after cardiac arrest (DDAC). This type of sampling has become a common practice in several regions of France and Europe. In case of DDAC, the sampling protocol poses a significant temporal constraint, since the patient must be taken within 6 hours after the cardiac arrest. This constraint leads to a specific organization of the announcement of the death and the request for non-opposition to the levy. The brutal loss of a loved one is a potentially traumatic experience for family members. The manifestations of the pathological components of mourning such as post-traumatic stress disorder, anxio-depressive syndrome, pathological bereavement, are often expressed early in the first year after the death of the loved one. Families of organ donor patients probably represent a population at high risk for the expression of psychiatric conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder or pathological bereavement. The limited time available to prepare relatives to make a decision could promote the expression of psychiatric morbidity in the short or medium term. The data on this new transplantation procedure and its psychological consequences are insufficient, and we consider that if a state of post-traumatic stress occurred in more than 50% of parents, the procedure of announcement would be reviewed. The purpose of this study is to test this hypothesis. Most of the work on relatives of potential organ donors has focused on procedures for brain death. Most of this work has focused on characterizing the determinants of acceptance or refusal of organ donation in the family. The literature relating to the follow-up of relatives of a patient after organ donation is very poor: very few studies have focused on the psychological consequences and / or the psychological state of this population in the period post-death. In addition, very few qualitative and quantitative studies make it possible to evaluate the appearance of psychopathological manifestations related to the announcement of death simultaneously with a request for organ removal. This research, therefore, will make it possible to estimate the possible psychological impact on the bereaved family as well as an assessment of the psychological state. A mixed methodology (quantitative and qualitative) will make it possible to highlight explanatory factors of the quantitative results.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is characterized by hypervigilance. In particular, previous works suggest that patients tend to scan constantly the environment for possible threats. The present project aims at investigating such attentional bias in patients with PTSD using the change blindness paradigm that offers the interesting possibility of studying sensitivity to sudden changes using ecological stimuli. More precisely, the investigators will investigate whether patients are more sensitive than matched controls to sudden changes in the visual environment and whether this hypersensitivity is specific or even stronger when visual information has an emotional content. The attentional bias will be measured using motor responses (accuracy and speed to indicate the occurrence of a change by pressing a button) as well as eye movements.

This mixed-methods pilot study aim to assess the changes in symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD), dissociative symptoms, self-critique, and self-compassion following participation in a 16-week trauma-sensitive mindfulness and compassion (TMC) intervention. Adverse experiences of participation are also explored explicitly.

Objective psychophysiologic reactivity data may be useful for predicting post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) treatment response. Given the variety of PTSD treatments and the lack of a clearly superior treatment, a reliable and valid approach to predicting treatment response is needed. Specific Aims: 1). Evaluate the clinical utility of psychophysiologic reactivity measures to predict overall PTSD symptom response among OEF/OIF/OND (Operation Enduring Freedom/Operation Iraqi Freedom/Operation New Dawn) veterans receiving treatment for PTSD. 2). Evaluate the clinical utility of psychophysiologic reactivity measures to predict psychosocial functioning and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) response among OEF/OIF/OND veterans in treatment for PTSD. Exploratory). Develop psychophysiologic, neuropsychological, and/or self-report models to predict PTSD symptom response to pharmacotherapy, psychotherapy, and combined pharmacotherapy/psychotherapy. The investigators will divide psychophysiologic reactivity predictors into two groups: heart rate variability and attentional bias (eye gaze tracking and modified Stroop). The investigators will collect observational and longitudinal data from a treatment-seeking sample of 50 OEF/OIF/OND veterans with PTSD recruited from the Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System (CAVHS) Mental Health Clinics.

This is an exploratory qualitative interview study being conducted with a primary objective of examining perceptions held by active military and veterans regarding help-seeking attitudes and mental health beliefs which influence the decision to consent or decline participation in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) or Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) clinical trials. Active duty military and/or veterans aged 18 years and older who consent to participate (N = 50), or have recently declined participation (N = 50), in an INTRuST affiliated outpatient clinical trial for deployment-related PTSD or TBI will be recruited. Participants who consent to participate in an INTRuST clinical trial (Group 1) will be interviewed once at the beginning the of the clinical trial, and again following participation in the trial. Participants who decline participation in an INTRuST affiliated outpatient clinical trial (Group 2) will be interviewed once. For participants in both groups, study participation will initiate within 1 month of referral to study. Total duration of study participation is based on the specific clinical trial that the participant is recruitment from; the longest trial is estimated to be 24 weeks or less. Semi-structured qualitative individual interviews will be conducted to carry out a thematic analysis of the data exploring familial, social and institution-level constructs which may influence the subjective experience of the research treatment process.

Trauma-informed treatment will improve emotional regulation and behavior.

The purpose of this study is to determine whether the brains of persons with and without traumatic brain injury differ in a meaningful way when advanced technology images of the brain are taken using three newer technologies that visualize the brain using a combination of external/internal magnetic fields and radioactive tracers (molecules that emit detectable particles). The hope is that the results of this study will validate tools (help prove that diagnostic tools actually detect disease) for the diagnosis and treatment of traumatic brain injuries (TBI).

The overarching aim of this Exploratory/Developmental Research Grant Award (R21) is to explore the neurobiological correlates of PTSD during REM sleep by using state-of-the science positron emission tomography (PET) sleep imaging. This study will allow us to gain insight into the differences in sleep and waking brain mechanisms between veterans with PTSD and those without PTSD.