A Randomized, Controlled Trial of Meditation Compared to Exposure Therapy and Education Control on PTSD in Veterans

Abstract

This study consists of a comparative effectiveness trial of Transcendental Meditation (TM) compared to Prolonged Exposure (PE) and education control (EC) groups in Veterans diagnosed with clinically significant PTSD by way of a validated structured interview methodology over a treatment period of three months. Two hundred and ten veterans will participate in this three-arm trial. Testing will be conducted at 0 and 3 months for PTSD symptoms, psychological distress, depression, quality of life, behavioral factors, and physiological/ biochemical mechanisms using validated interview, self-report, and biological measures. Recruitment began in June of 2013. We hypothesize that TM will be non-inferior to PE on the primary outcome of the study and superior to EC on PTSD study outcomes. This will be a multidisciplinary, collaborative research project comprising investigators from the San Diego VA Healthcare System, the University of California at San Diego and Maharishi University of Management Research Institute. Given a sample of 210 patients, an alpha level of .05 for declaring statistical significance, equal standard deviations, and an attrition rate of 20%, estimated power levels are .90.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Aug 01, 2013
Accession Number
ADA591180

Entities

People

  • Thomas Rutledge

Tags

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Anxiety Disorders
  • Attrition
  • Biomedical Research
  • California
  • Cardiovascular Physiological Phenomena
  • Delivery Of Health Care
  • Department Of Defense
  • Depression
  • Diseases And Disorders
  • Education
  • Health Care
  • Health Services
  • Institutional Review Board
  • Medical Personnel
  • Psychiatry
  • Quality Of Life
  • Traumatic Stress Disorder

Readers

  • Allergy and Immunology.
  • Clinical Trial Research.
  • Psychological Intervention/Treatment for Stress, Anxiety, PTSD, and Related Emotional and Cognitive Health Symptoms.