VA Office of Research and Development
This project focuses on how the investigators can treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) with a Creative Art Teletherapy, Art-therapy Remote Treatment for Veterans Experiencing Trauma (ART-VET). Treatments for PTSD do not work well enough for many Veterans with PTSD. Many patients do not recover with current treatment methods. A core deficit in PTSD is an inability to feel safe in secure environments, and not to have flight, flight, or freeze behaviors. Unfortunately, many people have trouble with exposure-based psychotherapies and have trouble getting better or learning how to feel safer. Also, many rural Veterans are unable to attend treatment sessions in person. The investigators plan to conduct a clinical trial of ART-VET, a promising 8 session (roughly weekly) teletherapy program, and the investigators will measure how well it works using many clinical and research measures before, during, and after participating in the therapy.
The primary goal of this proposal is to evaluate a promising teletherapy for Veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder, ART-VET. Problem: Current treatments for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) face considerable challenges including high dropout rates and insufficient remission rates. First line pharmacotherapy using selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI), serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRI), or psychotherapeutic methods such as prolonged exposure therapy result in remission rates between 20 and 50%, though this estimate is confounded by high dropout rates. Furth…
Inclusion Criteria: * US Veterans with Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) * Able to operate a pen \& keyboard * Willing to participate in a Creative Art Teletherapy based intervention (including stable internet connection and compatible computing device) * English proficiency (study materials are only available in English; participants must be able to read and write in English) * Willing to provide informed consent. Consistent with ethical principles, all participants must be able to understand the nature of the experiment(s) they are volunteering to participate in, to understand their rig…
ART-VET consists of 8 telehealth sessions, each approximately 1 hour in duration, scheduled approximately weekly. Sessions balance a well-structured progression with individualization for each participant. Following an initial evaluation and psychoeducation around art therapy and PTSD, sessions follow a progression of established treatment practices that use art to guide the Veteran through stages of trauma treatment that includes establishing safety, sharing one's story, tolerating distress in sharing the trauma experience in order to work towards desired change, processing trauma in order to integrate the experience and regulate emotions, building coping skills, improving relationships with oneself and/or loved ones, integrating prior and current identities, and working towards closure. Sessions incorporate art media and processes, allowing participants to explore these themes visually as well as through verbal processing of the experience and imagery created.
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