Interpersonal Psychotherapy for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a prevalent, debilitating public health problem. It is a treatable condition, but the predominant approach to treatment has involved exposing patients to their worst fears, the reminders of their traumas. Many patients and therapists find this process unpleasant, and exposure-based treatment does not help everyone. We recently studied Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT), a non-exposure treatment that focuses on restoring the numbed emotions of patients with PTSD and helping patients use them to reconstruct a sense of safety in their environment. IPT focuses on patients’ feelings as helpful signals in current interpersonal encounters, not on reconstructing past traumatic events. IPT worked as well as Prolonged Exposure, the best-tested exposure-based treatment, in a randomized controlled trial for patients with chronic PTSD. Moreover, IPT had advantages for the half of patients who suffered both from PTSD and from major depression. This book describes for clinicians the use of IPT and its emotion- and attachment-based approach.