Source: centerhealthyminds
Many veterans from the Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan war) or Operation Iraqi Freedom (Iraq war) suffer from pronounced posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symp- toms that contribute to alarming suicide rates (Panagioti, Good- ing, & Tarrier, 2009; Sher, Braquehais, & Casas, 2012; U.S. De- partment of Veteran Affairs, 2012). Despite promising advances in evidence-based treatments for PTSD (Cukor, Olden, Lee, & Difede, 2010), dropout rates remain as high as 54.0% in popula- tions with PTSD (Brown, 2012; Schottenbauer, Glass, Arnkoff, Tendick, & Gray, 2008) and up to 62.4% in Afghanistan or Iraq veterans (e.g., Harpaz-Rotem & Rosenheck, 2011).
Furthermore, results of pharmaceutical treatments are mixed (Alderman, McCarthy, & Marwood, 2009), whereas substan- tial residual symptoms remain after psychotherapy (Bradley, Greene, Russ, Dutra, & Westen, 2005), suggesting a critical need to evaluate alternative or supplementary approaches to treating PTSD.
Procedure
All subjective and objective laboratory assessments for the ac- tive group were conducted within 1 week before (Time 1) and 1 week after (Time 2) the 7-day intervention. To control for sea- son and time effects, the control group underwent laboratory assessments during the same month (November 2010). Long- term efficacy was assessed via online self-report questionnaires 1 month (Time 3) and 1 year (Time 4) postintervention.
All 21 participants completed physiological and self-report assessments at Time 1. One participant in the active group dropped out after the third day because he disliked the inter- vention. Ten participants in each group completed assessments at Time 2. Eight from each group completed assessments at Time 3 (1-month postintervention), whereas nine participants in the active group and eight in the control group completed assessments at Time 4 (1-year postintervention). Three of eight control participants received the Sudarshan Kriya yoga inter- vention between Times 3 and 4; therefore, their Time 4 data were excluded. No harm or unintended effects were reported for either group.
Read more | Journal of Traumatic Stress Published on behalf of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies.
