Treatment development: The early years

Randomized clinical trials (RCTs) are important in determining the efficacy of a given intervention. The control conditions allow us to attribute gains and outcomes to the intervention and not to something else (a different therapy, passage of time, therapeutic alliance, etc.) This chapter reviews the published RCTs testing the efficacy of CPT. We describe the patient population included in the study, the type of trauma that has caused their PTSD, comorbid diagnoses of note, and the types of therapies, conditions, and versions of CPT that were compared to CPT. We also calculated a percent change in PTSD severity scores whenever possible as well as effect sizes (see later for a description). Finally, we provide a summary statement for each study describing the take home message of the study and its clinical relevance to therapists.