OMAHA, Neb. (July 27, 2015) — Creighton University Psychology Professor Amy Badura-Brack, Ph.D., and Reut Naim, M.S., from Tel Aviv University have published a new paper that reports promising results for the treatment of military veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
The study, titled “Effect of Attention Training on Attention Bias Variability and PTSD Symptoms: Randomized Controlled Trials in Israeli and U.S. Combat Veterans” has been published by The American Journal of Psychiatry.
Badura-Brack received a grant from At Ease USA, which funded her U.S. clinical trial. At Ease USA, based in Omaha, is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to support active and retired U.S. military personnel in receiving quality treatment for PTSD and related disorders.
The research was a collaborative effort between researchers at Creighton University, Tel-Aviv University and the National Institute of Mental Health. The study reports that attention control training using a computer program significantly reduced PTSD symptoms of military veterans.
Badura-Brack and Naim conducted two separate trials in their respective countries, one of U.S. military veterans and the other of Israel Defense Forces veterans, comparing the results of two methods for treating PTSD. In both trials, attention control training produced significantly greater outcomes in reducing PTSD symptoms than attention bias modification training. This treatment is short, simple, and only requires 10-minutes per session.
“People with PTSD have symptoms that alternate between over-attending to and avoiding potentially threatening information. Attention control training appears to reduce symptoms of PTSD by regulating this difficulty and teaching people with PTSD to ignore irrelevant threatening information,” Badura-Brack said. She is pleased to announce that At Ease USA has just funded a second grant, so the research team can develop a web-deliverable version of this promising treatment for testing.
In conjunction with Tony Wilson, Ph.D., director of the Center for Magnetoencephalography at Nebraska Medicine, Badura-Brack also is leading research investigating the neuroscience behind the treatment effects. The team is using cutting-edge brain imaging to study the nature of PTSD and the brain’s response to attention training treatment.
In addition to Badura-Brack, Creighton University co-authors of the study include graduates Timothy McDermott and Tara Ryan and associate professor Maya Khanna, Ph.D. These Creighton researchers are honored to collaborate with Yair Bar-Haim, Ph.D., and his lab from Tel Aviv University, and Daniel Pine, M.D. from NIMH, in discovering this promising new treatment for PTSD.
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