Bridging Access to PTSD Care in Primary Care

Prolonged exposure therapy involves working with patients to help them approach the memories and reminders of trauma so that they are the ones in control of their lives—not the trauma. PTSD is a disorder of avoidance and prolonged exposure therapy gives the patient the tools needed to approach the memory and the people, places and situations they had been avoiding.

“At its bones, the treatment is simple relearning, doing what you are afraid of over and over again and it gets easier,” said Dr. Rauch.

Three common components of prolonged exposure therapy are:

• Psychoeducation
• Imaginal Exposure
• In Vivo

Psychoeducation provides a foundation of information on how PTSD develops and how treatment works. This foundation helps the patient and provider speak the same language and lets the patient begin to learn how to approach instead of avoid.

During imaginal exposure, the patient is asked to narrate the feared situation to the clinician multiple times. This narration is an important step because it allows the patient to finally process the trauma that occurred and understand why it was so disarming in the first place.

In Vivo (a Latin phrase translated as “in the living”) is a method used to take the tools learned during therapy sessions into a real-world setting. If the patient is working to overcome a fear of driving, for example, an in vivo session may include the clinician and patient driving through Atlanta traffic.