Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Psychological Factors and Psychosocial Interventions.

In this article, we propose that successful processing of traumatic events involves emotional engagementwith the trauma memory, organization of the trauma narrative, and correction of dysfunctionalcognitions that often follow trauma. We further propose that the success of psychosocial treatmentsof posttraumatic stress disorder hinges on the ability of the treatments to address impairmentsin these processes. We focus our presentation of psychosocial interventions on cognitive-behavioraltreatments (CBT), since this approach had gained the most empirical support to date, and describe theresults of controlled trials that compare the relative efficacy of several CBT interventions.