Trials / Completed
CompletedNCT04228133
Home-Delivered Attention Control Treatment for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Home-Delivered Attention Control Training for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder: A Randomized Controlled Trial
- Status
- Completed
- Phase
- N/A
- Study type
- Interventional
- Enrollment
- 60 (actual)
- Sponsor
- Tel Aviv University · Academic / Other
- Sex
- All
- Age
- 18 Years – 65 Years
- Healthy volunteers
- Not accepted
Summary
The aim of the study is to explore the efficacy of home-delivered Attention Control Training (ACT) for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Three randomized controlled trials have shown that attention bias modification protocols applying attention control training (ACT) aimed to balance attention between threat-related and neutral stimuli are efficient in reducing PTSD symptoms. However, contrary to in-clinic administration, such as applied in the above mentioned studies, home-delivered attention bias modification was not effective in reducing symptoms among treatment-seeking patients. It is crucial to continue examining the efficacy of home-delivered ACT as PTSD entails functional impairments that might impede treatment-seeking patients from reaching to clinics to receive treatment. This could also inform other ABM protocols designated to treat other disorders.
Detailed description
The aim of the study is to explore the efficacy of home-delivered Attention Control Training (ACT) for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Three randomized controlled trials have shown that attention bias modification (ABM) protocols applying attention control training (ACT) aimed to balance attention between threat-related and neutral stimuli are efficient in reducing PTSD symptoms. However, contrary to in-clinic administration, such as applied in the above mentioned studies, home-delivered ABM was not effective in reducing symptoms among treatment-seeking patients. It is crucial to continue examining the efficacy of home-delivered ACT as PTSD entails functional impairments that might impede treatment-seeking patients from reaching to clinics to receive treatment. This could also inform other ABM protocols designated to treat other disorders. To overcome some critical differences between home and lab environments, the investigators developed a home-delivered ACT protocol that resembles as much as possible the typical-in-lab protocol. Specifically, participants will be accompanied during their training sessions using internet-based video conference, permitting a better control for the physical environment before and during the session and a direct interaction with the experimenters. To test its efficacy, the investigators will recruit participants that are diagnosed with PTSD and will be randomly assigned to one of two home-delivered conditions: ACT and a control ABM condition. It is hypothesized that home-delivered ACT will produce greater reduction in PTSD symptoms relative to a control ABM protocol. It is also expected that ACT will reduce attention bias variability to a greater extent compared to the control condition.
Conditions
Interventions
| Type | Name | Description |
|---|---|---|
| BEHAVIORAL | Attention Control Training (ACT) | A home-delivered version of ACT will be administered in this study. ACT will be comprised of 8 sessions with a variation of the dot-probe task in which the target probe replaces the neutral and threat stimuli with an equal probability to reduce attention bias variability (ABV). In addition, sessions will include video conference with the experimenter. This condition has found to be more effective in PTSD symptom reduction compared to ABM. |
| BEHAVIORAL | Attention Bias Modification (ABM) | A home-delivered version of ABM will be administered in this study. ABM will be comprised of 8 sessions with a variation of the dot-probe task in which the target probe always replaces the threat stimuli to induce diversion of attention away from threat. In addition, sessions will include video conference with the experimenter. This condition has found to be have an inferior effect on PTSD symptom reduction compared to ACT, and thus, this ABM condition has been chosen as a control condition. |
Timeline
- Start date
- 2020-01-01
- Primary completion
- 2021-04-05
- Completion
- 2021-04-05
- First posted
- 2020-01-14
- Last updated
- 2021-04-06
Locations
1 site across 1 country: Israel
Source: ClinicalTrials.gov record NCT04228133. Inclusion in this directory is not an endorsement.