Posttraumatic stress disorder: Psychological factors and psychosocial interventions

In this article, we propose that successful processing of traumatic events involves emotional engagement with the trauma memory, organization of the t rauma narrative, and correction of dysfunctional cognitions that often foll ow trauma. We further propose that the success of psychosocial treatments o f posttraumatic stress disorder hinges on the ability of the treatments to address impairments in these processes. We focus our presentation of psycho social interventions on cognitive-behavioral treatments (CBT), since this a pproach had gained the most empirical support to date, and describe the res ults of controlled trials that compare the relative efficacy of several CBT interventions.