PROBEL; Prognostics in the Treatment Evaluation of the National System for Veterans' Care

Veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) benefit less from psychotherapy than non-military populations. Identification of predictors of treatment outcome may provide insights to guide treatment selection and develop personalized treatment strategies with more benefit in the future. We expect that a prognostic approach that extends regular diagnostic assessment with measurement of candidate predictors across multiple domains: psychodiagnostic (PD), neuropsychological (NP), and psychophysiological (PP), will have a higher prognostic value than using predictors within a single domain.

We hypothesize that combining PD, NP and PP factors will have a larger contribution in predicting treatment outcome than using predictors within a single domain.

This is a prospective observational cohort study in which patients will be assessed at three time points.
All patients will be assessed before the start of treatment (T1) and follow-up assessments will be completed after 6 (T2) and 12 months (T3).

This is an observational study with a naturalistic design. Treatment will be provided according to standard clinical care. At the five participating centers patients will receive conventional evidence-based trauma-focused psychotherapy. Treatment will consist of eye movement desensitization reprocessing (EMDR), brief eclectic psychotherapy (BEP), narrative exposure therapy (NET), and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). These interventions will be delivered in outpatient, day treatment or inpatient settings.