NCT03247179

The Mobile PTSD Coach App in Acute Injury Survivors

Secondary Prevention With the Mobile PTSD Coach App to Improve Health Outcomes and the Continuity of Care Following Traumatic Physical Injury: A Randomized Controlled Trial

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 64 (actual)
• Sponsor: University of Pittsburgh · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years – 65 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

This project is a preliminary randomized controlled trial testing the potential impact of the PTSD Coach mobile application at reducing posttraumatic stress and pain symptoms among acutely injured trauma patients. Immediately following the injury, patients will be randomly assigned to use the PTSD Coach app, or to the treatment as usual condition.

Detailed description

Traumatic injury is the leading cause of mortality in the U.S. for young people, and a source of long-term morbidity in all ages. A majority of trauma patients report chronic pain (CP) and disability at 4-months (30%- 79%) and 12-months (63%) post-injury. Maladaptive psychological processes have a stronger association with the transition to CP than does injury severity. Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms (e.g., intrusions, avoidance and hyperarousal) occur in up to 22% of post-injury patients and herald the transition from acute to CP. Although psychological interventions can modify PTSD symptoms, and reduce CP, it is unknown if early intervention to prevent PTSD symptoms can prevent post-injury CP altogether. "PTSD Coach" is a publicly available, free, mobile app that provides scalable and psychosocial support modeled on principles of cognitive-behavioral therapy. PTSD Coach has helped Veterans and civilians to manage PTSD. This project will test whether PTSD Coach can reduce post-injury maladaptive psychological processes and thereby prevent post-injury CP. The preventive intervention will be targeted towards those at the highest-risk of developing PTSD. The investigators propose to test the efficacy of the PTSD Coach app vs. treatment as usual (TAU) among a sample of acute physical injury patients, to: 1) Determine engagement with PTSD Coach, by measuring frequency of use over 4-weeks and assessing ratings of usefulness and qualitative feedback: it is expected that \>80% of PTSD Coach users will use the app at least once a week, and will rate it as at least somewhat helpful; 2) Estimate effect on CP symptoms by measuring PTSD and pain intensity at 1- and 3-months. The effect of the intervention on pain interference, disability, and coping self-efficacy will also be explored.

Conditions

• Chronic Pain
• Acute Pain Due to Trauma
• Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
OTHER	PTSD Coach mobile application	The PTSD Coach app is publicly available for free, and draws on cognitive behavioral therapy components to help participants learn, manage, and cope with their PTSD symptoms in real time.

Timeline

• Start date: 2017-09-19
• Primary completion: 2018-12-20
• Completion: 2019-02-15
• First posted: 2017-08-11
• Last updated: 2019-03-04

Locations

2 sites across 1 country: United States