Randomized Controlled Trial of Sertraline, Prolonged Exposure Therapy and Their Combination of OEF/OIF with PTSD.

摘要

The current proposal aims to directly compare the psychotherapy and medication treatments for PTSD considered to have the most evidence for effectiveness. While both SSRI and PE have demonstrated efficacy, there are significant individual differences in clinical responses to both treatments. To achieve best clinical outcomes and to utilize available treatment most effectively, it is critical to examine how PTSD and related psychopathology and functional impairment change with these treatments alone and in combination. Further, in order to inform clinical practice, we plan to examine psychological and neurobiological predictors of response to treatment and mechanisms of change during treatment (pre to post treatment change) based on previously identified predictors, including emotion regulation and processing with fMRI in response to emotional challenge tasks, DNA (pre treatment only) and mRNA (pre and post treatment), and cortisol response to awakening.