Emerging as an effective therapy: CPT is put to the test

It is critical to know how well treatments that have been evaluated under rigorous controlled conditions perform in more real-world settings and when offered to patients who have sought help from routine care services. In this chapter, we review this literature and the outcomes achieved with CPT. We show that there is support for the key mechanism theorized to promote recovery using CPT, namely changes in unhelpful cognitions. We also provide an overview of the wide range of other benefits that CPT confers beyond treating PTSD. That is, CPT has positive impacts on problems commonly associated with PTSD and trauma, including improvements in suicidality, physical health, and relationships, among others. We summarize by concluding that CPT is beneficial for a wide range of patient groups and that individuals have demonstrable improvements in important domains of functioning beyond the reduction of PTSD and depression symptoms.