title: Relative Efficacy of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy Administered by Videoconference for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Six-Month Follow-Up.
abstract: Until recently, only one study was published on cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in individual therapy via videoconference (Germain, Marchand, Bouchard, Drouin, & Guay, 2009); however, it only assessed the posttreatment effect. This study presents the follow-up of Germain et al.'s (2009) study. The main goal was to compare the effectiveness after six months of CBT for PTSD either face-to-face (n = 24) or by videoconference (n = 12). Each participant received CBT for 16 to 25 weeks and completed various questionnaires before and after treatment and at a six-month follow-up. The two treatments had equivalent levels of symptom reduction (Modified PTSD Symptom Scale: η2< 0.01, p > .05) and proportion of patients with a clinically significant change in symptoms (42% for face-to-face vs. 38% for videoconferencing, p > .05). Thus, CBT for PTSD via videoconference seems to be a viable alternative when adequate face-to-face treatments are less available.
authors.affiliation: Département de psychologie, Université du Québec à Montréal, Montréal, Québec, Canada; and Centre d'Étude du Trauma, Hôpital Louis-H. Lafontaine, Montréal, Québec, Canada.
authors.forename: André
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Marchand
authors.forename: Dominic
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Beaulieu-Prévost
authors.forename: Stéphane
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Guay
authors.forename: Stéphane
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Bouchard
authors.forename: Marc Simon
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Drouin
authors.forename: Vanessa
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Germain
keywords: cognitive-behavioral therapy; diverse trauma; telepsychotherapy; videoconference