NCT02874898

Short-Term Exposure for PTSD

Marijuana Use, Extinction Learning, and Exposure Therapy in Individuals With PTSD

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 46 (actual)
• Sponsor: University of Washington · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years – 65 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

This study examines how marijuana use affects processes related to recovery from chronic posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Half the participants will be individuals with chronic PTSD and heavy marijuana use and half will be individuals with chronic PTSD and no marijuana use. This study will assess how individuals with PTSD with heavy or no marijuana use perform on a discriminative conditioning and extinction paradigm designed to measure fear extinction learning, and how they respond to a brief daily imaginal exposure treatment in regards to PTSD symptom reduction.

Detailed description

In this study, 36 patients with chronic PTSD and heavy marijuana use (heavy) and 36 patients with chronic PTSD and no marijuana use (no use) will be recruited to examine the effects of marijuana use on behavioral (emotional experiencing), physiological (skin conductance, acoustic startle) and biological (cortisol, blood pressure) responding on a well-established discriminative conditioning and extinction paradigm. To examine real world therapeutic implications, we will also examine how individuals with PTSD and heavy or no marijuana use differentially respond to a brief (6 session, 50 min) daily imaginal exposure (IE) treatment. Throughout treatment, we will monitor level of cannabis metabolites in urine samples of marijuana users to correlate effects to outcomes and preliminarily explore how varying levels of cannabis metabolites affect extinction processes. Independent evaluators will assess patients at baseline, 4 weeks, and 12 weeks following study entry.

Conditions

• Chronic Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
• Marijuana Abuse

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	Brief Imaginal Exposure	Psychoeducation and imaginal exposure components of full prolonged exposure, in which patients relive the trauma vividly and process thoughts and feelings related to it

Timeline

• Start date: 2016-06-01
• Primary completion: 2022-08-15
• Completion: 2022-08-15
• First posted: 2016-08-22
• Last updated: 2022-08-23

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United States