Mervin Smucker, Langkaas, Tomas, Nore, G. & Borge, F-M. When Change is not on Time – Troubleshooting Protocol-Based Treatment of PTSD.

Symposium presented at the 38th Annual Congress of the European Association for Behavioural & Cognitive Therapies, Dubrovnik, Croatia.

Recurring and distressing thoughts and images of a traumatic event are key characteristics of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The disorder leads to significant distress and loss of functioning for those who suffer from it. Developing effective treatment for PTSD has received increased interest in the CBT field in recent years, and several protocol-based CBT approaches now exist.  However, employing a treatment protocol on a specific case does not always lead to the desired change and expected progress, and a significant proportion of PTSD clients in naturalistic settings fail to respond to our CBT treatments. The central theme for this symposium is “How to progress with protocol-based PTSD treatment when change does not happen as expected?”

The speakers of this symposium present case examples undergoing different protocol-based PTSD treatments that failed to progress as expected.  Various attempts to troubleshoot these cases are discussed.

Mervin Smucker Ph.D