MedTrace Logo

Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Addiction, and Virtual Reality

NCT01186315 · Status: COMPLETED · Phase: NA · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 38

Last updated 2014-08-21

No results posted yet for this study

Summary

Eligible veterans, National Guardsmen \& Reservists with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and problems with addiction will be randomly assigned to one of two treatment conditions. All participants will undergo exposure therapy, a gold standard behavioral treatment for PTSD for 10 weeks. In addition to exposure therapy, some participants will be randomly assigned to receive (1) virtual reality (VR)-based exposure to cues for marijuana, cocaine, heroin, cigarette, and/or alcohol use, and (2) cellular phone-based reminders of learning (extinction reminders, or, ERs) to VR exposure (available 24 hours per day/7 days per week) to high-risk contexts for drug use. The main hypothesis is that those participants who receive exposure therapy + VR/ERs will demonstrate less substance use and lower PTSD symptoms during treatment, at post-treatment, and at follow-up than those participants who only receive exposure therapy. At study completion, a total of 123 subjects signed consent.

Conditions

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Prolonged Exposure Therapy

These treatments include repeated exposure to intrusive trauma-related memories in a safe and structured manner designed to reduce emotional arousal and facilitate processing of trauma-related memories.

BEHAVIORAL

Prolonged Exposure therapy + VR/ER

The therapy includes repeated exposure to intrusive trauma-related memories in a safe and structured manner designed to reduce emotional arousal and facilitate processing of trauma-related memories and adding in virtual reality (VR)-based exposure to cues for marijuana, cocaine, heroin, cigarette, and/or alcohol use \& CER used outside treatment sessions in response to VR exposure (available 24 hours per day/7 days per week) to high-risk contexts for drug use

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • Duke University

    lead OTHER

  • United States Department of Defense

    collaborator FED

  • Telemedicine & Advanced Technology Research Center

    collaborator OTHER

Principal Investigators

  • Zachary Rosenthal, PhD · Duke University

Study Design

Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
TREATMENT
Masking
SINGLE
Model
PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age
18 Years
Max Age
65 Years
Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2008-12-31
Primary Completion
2013-10-31
Completion
2013-12-31

Countries

  • United States

Study Locations

More Related Trials

Entities

Diseases
Companies

Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT01186315 on ClinicalTrials.gov