PTSD: Bringing the War Home [Poster]

Abstract

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental disorder affecting many people. With NGCSU having a large military presence, our group focused on PTSD in the veteran population. The question we sought to answer is does screening for PTSD in veterans lead to effective treatment? Our search for literature included three databases, MEDLINE, CINAHL, and the Cochrane Collaboration. Key words to perform the searches included: posttraumatic stress disorder; PTSD; combat; combat veterans; combat related; TBI; physical injury; and suicide. We performed author searches to find other related articles. The search resulted in one meta-analysis, four randomized controlled trials, eight correlational/observational studies, and three descriptive studies. The different treatment methods were compared against results from treatment as usual (TAU) to decide which treatment method led to the most improvement. The result of the comparison is that the virtual reality treatment method is the best option for reducing PTSD symptoms in veterans. [Poster]