Childhood trauma and posttraumatic stress disorder in a real-world Veterans Affairs clinic: Examining treatment preferences and dropout.

Abstract

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has promoted large-scale dissemination efforts of evidence-based psychotherapies (EBPs) for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In spite of efforts to make gold-standard treatments available to veterans, few veterans with PTSD receive a full course of psychotherapy. It is unclear if type of trauma experienced is related to treatment initiation and completion. This study aimed to identify patient factors, including experiencing childhood trauma that related to treatment preferences and dropout in a real-world VA PTSD clinic. A chart review was conducted for veterans who were referred for individual EBPs for PTSD (N = 199). Extracted variables included demographics, PTSD symptoms, treatment preferences, and treatment completion/dropout. Veterans choose to engage in individual EBP (48%), group treatment (11%), nontrauma focused psychotherapy (15%), or no psychotherapy (26%). Slightly over half of the veterans who began individual EBP completed it, with no statistical differences in completion rates for prolonged exposure and cognitive processing therapy. Childhood trauma was the second-most common type of trauma experienced, next to combat exposure. Those who completed EBP had higher rates of combat trauma (88%) than noncompleters (70%), and noncompleters (50%) had higher rates of childhood trauma than completers (29%). Regardless of trauma experienced, those who completed an EBP experienced substantial reductions in PTSD symptoms. Assessing veterans for childhood trauma and emotion regulation difficulties may be beneficial even in VA clinics where treatment is most often focused on combat trauma. (PsycINFO Database Record