NCT02399696

Primary Care-Based Mindfulness Intervention for Veterans With PTSD

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 62 (actual)
• Sponsor: Syracuse VA Medical Center · Federal
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

Primary care patients typically do not receive adequate PTSD treatment because of their reluctance to engage in empirically-supported treatments offered in specialty care settings. Effective treatments for PTSD are also typically not provided in primary care. Brief skill-based treatments offered in primary care may alleviate symptoms and prepare patients to engage in additional treatment. VA primary care patients with PTSD (N=62) were recruited for a randomized clinical trial comparing a Primary Care-Brief Mindfulness Program (PC-bMP) to primary care-treatment as usual (PC-TAU). PC-bMP is a 4-week group program adapted from the 8-week Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) curriculum. Veterans in the PC-bMP condition demonstrated significantly greater decreases in PTSD and depressive symptoms from pre-treatment to post-treatment compared to PC-TAU. These gains were maintained at 8 and 12 week follow-up. PC-bMP participants experienced clinically significant decreases in PTSD, averaging a 15-point drop on the Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale. Exploratory analyses revealed that the describing, non-judging, and acting with awareness facets of mindfulness may account for decreases in PTSD. Our data support preliminary efficacy of a brief mindfulness-based intervention for Veterans with PTSD in primary care. Further research is needed to investigate how PC-bMP may facilitate engagement into full length empirically-supported treatment for PTSD.

Conditions

• PTSD

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	Primary Care-Brief Mindfulness Program	A 4-week group program adapted from the 8-week Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) curriculum
BEHAVIORAL	Primary Care-Treatment as Usual	Typical VA primary care treatment, including mental health services delivered by primary care staff.

Timeline

• Start date: 2013-03-01
• Primary completion: 2014-06-01
• Completion: 2014-06-01
• First posted: 2015-03-26
• Last updated: 2015-03-31