Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Addiction, and Virtual Reality

Completed · Not applicable

Conditions studied: Substance Use Disorders, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

In brief

Eligible veterans, National Guardsmen \& Reservists with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and problems with addiction will be randomly assigned to one of two treatment conditions. All participants will undergo exposure therapy, a gold standard behavioral treatment for PTSD for 10 weeks. In addition to exposure therapy, some participants will be randomly assigned to receive (1) virtual reality (VR)-based exposure to cues for marijuana, cocaine, heroin, cigarette, and/or alcohol use, and (2) cellular phone-based reminders of learning (extinction reminders, or, ERs) to VR exposure (available 24 hours per day/7 days per week) to high-risk contexts for drug use. The main hypothesis is that those participants who receive exposure therapy + VR/ERs will demonstrate less substance use and lower PTSD symptoms during treatment, at post-treatment, and at follow-up than those participants who only receive exposure therapy. At study completion, a total of 123 subjects signed consent.

Key facts

Study ID

NCT01186315

Run by

Duke University

People needed

38

Starts

2008-12-01

Expected to finish

2013-12-01

Last updated by the study team

2014-08-21

Who can join

Age: 18 and older, up to 65. Sex: any. Healthy volunteers: not accepted.

You may qualify if…

• Meets SCID-I criteria for PTSD; criterion A stressor must be deployment related, and substance dependence; primary substance of dependence is cocaine, heroin, alcohol, cigarettes, or marijuana
• Must be a Veteran
• Consents to outpatient treatment for PTSD and drug addiction

You may not qualify if…

• Full criteria met for current manic episode or psychotic disorder through using SCID-I interviews
• Pregnant at time of treatment
• IQ less than 70; unable to give consent; can not read
• current and chronic absence of shelter
• impending jail/prison for more than three weeks
• Court order to treatment, court order to treatment or to jail, or agency order to treatment or loss of child custody (due to inability to freely drop-out of treatment)
• Refuses to discontinue current mental health or drug abuse behavioral treatment (i.e., psychotherapy) or random assignment
• Suicide attempt or self-harm in the past 6 months

Where it is running

• Duke University Medical Center — Durham, North Carolina, United States

Full record on ClinicalTrials.gov

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