In working with Psychology Interns, Psychiatry Residents, Social Workers, and all other types of mental health providers from the most experienced to least, I’ve found that people often forget the basis of Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) and Prolonged Exposure (PE). CPT is a form of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and PE is a form of Exposure Therapy. They are not unique theories.
In 2015, the National Center for Health Statistics found that in the U.S. alone, 9.8 million adults endorsed having serious suicidal thoughts, and 1.3 million adults reported a suicide attempt during the past year (World Health Organization). Suicide experts advocate for restricting access to lethal means as an effective strategy to reduce suicide rates. In this blog, I plan to review the efficacy of reducing access to various lethal means.
Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) is one of the gold-standard treatments available to adults with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and remains a first-line recommended treatment in the latest VA/DoD Clinical Practice Guideline for the Management of PTSD and Acute Stress Disorder (DVA & DoD, 2017). CPT is a robust and flexible treatment in that it can be delivered with or without a written trauma account, in person or via tele-health, and individually or in group format. Dozens of randomized control trials and effectiveness trials demonstrate that CPT is one of the most effective treatments for PTSD in both civilian and military-connected populations.
The lack of training pertaining to the assessment and treatment of sleep disorders is not uncommon amongst behavioral healthcare providers. When I am conducting trainings for CDP, few attendees endorse receiving any formal training pertaining to the assessment and treatment of sleep disorders. However, when asked about the patients that they work with, most attendees indicate the vast majority of their patients have sleep problems. This critical knowledge gap between training and clinical needs of patients underscores the importance of training in the assessment and treatment of sleep disorders. In particular, I want to highlight some key points I have taken from my training in this area and have found to be very helpful in my clinical practice, supervision and training.
I recently received some feedback on training materials I put together, about how PTSD develops after a combat trauma. I had mentioned that classical conditioning explains how stimuli that occur in close proximity can become associated, resulting in conditioned responses. Of course, I mentioned Pavlov, because, dogs! Right? I might also have mentioned that our family dog salivates and does a little happy dance right on cue every morning when I grind the coffee, just before I walk over and scoop her food into the dish.