science

Internet interventions for post-traumatic stress

Internet interventions for post-traumatic stress is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Internet interventions for post-traumatic stress rather than just read about it. In short: Internet interventions for post-traumatic stress have grown in popularity due to the limits that many patients face in their ability to seek therapy to treat their symptoms. These limits include lack of resources and residing in small towns or in the countryside.

Key takeaways

Internet interventions for post-traumatic stress belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Internet interventions for post-traumatic stress to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Internet interventions for post-traumatic stress from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Internet interventions for post-traumatic stress have grown in popularity due to the limits that many patients face in their ability to seek therapy to treat their symptoms. These limits include lack of resources and residing in small towns or in the countryside. These patients may find it difficult to seek treatment because they do not have geographical access to treatment, and this can also limit the time they have to seek help. Additionally, those who live in rural areas may experience more stigma related to mental health issues. Internet interventions can increase the possibility that those who suffer from PTSD can seek help by eliminating these barriers to treatment. Most of the internet interventions for PTSD currently being studied use cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) tenants to provide treatment. Often these internet interventions also pull from Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT) and exposure therapy as well. There are two types of internet interventions. Those that are “therapist-assisted,” which means there is an actual therapist guiding the patient through some, but not all of the intervention, and those that are self-guided, which means they do not provide this service. In therapist assisted interventions, patients have access to a live therapist either via video conferencing, instant messenger, or telephone. Therapists can provide feedback to the patient's assignments, and help them process their trauma. In self-guided interventions, patients do not have contact with therapists, unless there is an emergency in which they are a risk to themselves or others. Throughout these interventions, patients are given coping skills and resources. The resources available to patients participating in a self-guided intervention are typically crisis lines, emergency services, and outside sources in which the person can seek help or treatment. The resources provided in a self-guided treatment protocol are not a part of the intervention itself. While there is a recent shift toward completely removing the need for a therapist in many internet interventions, most of the online interventions currently being researched and used for PTSD still use therapists as part of their protocol. The involvement of the therapist in the intervention varies across interventions. For example, while one study had therapists in direct communication with clients via the Internet every session, another study only had therapists for intake and follow-up purposes. The existing interventions have been shown to be effective in reducing symptoms of PTSD with varying causes such as war in Iraq or miscarriages. This effectiveness is consistent across follow-ups up to a year out from the interventions, but one randomized control trial does report that more structured and highly therapist-assisted interventions are more effective than purely psychoeducational or inspirational interventions.

Therapist-assisted internet interventions

High therapist involvement One example of an internet intervention with a high level of therapist involvement is Interapy, which was created and named by Alfred Lange and a team of psychologists at the University of Amsterdam in 2003. Interapy uses a CPT approach and assigns two 45-minute writing sessions each week for five weeks. The writing sessions are assigned via the Internet and guide the participant through three phases of treatment. The first phase, Self-Confrontation, involves describing the traumatic event in great detail within the writing assignment. This phase is a self-guided exposure to the traumatic event aimed at reducing the avoidance and distress of memories or reminders of the event. The second phase, Cognitive Reappraisal, helps the participant to instill new views concerning the traumatic event. This is achieved by a writing assignment that asks the participants to write a letter with encouraging advice to a hypothetical friend who experienced a similar traumatic event. The last phase of Interapy, Sharing and Farewell Ritual, involves participants writing a letter to themselves or others who were involved in the traumatic event about how the event changed or impacted their lives. Therapists are highly involved in the entire process of Interapy. They not only customize each writing assignment personally for the participants under their care, but also give written feedback about each assignment turned in by the participants. So far, Interapy shows promising results for participants in the Netherlands, Germany, and Iraq, and has been shown to have positive effects on PTSD symptoms as far as three months from the end of treatment.

Medium therapist involvement PTSD Online is an example of an internet intervention that requires a medium level of therapist involvement. PTSD Online was created by Britt Klein and a team of psychologists in Victoria, Australia in 2010. The intervention was a ten-week interactive program that guides the participant through a different module each week. The first module focuses on psychoeducation about trauma and trauma responses (including stress and anxiety). Modules 2 and 3 are directed at anxiety and stress reduction tools, such as deep breathing and progressive muscle relaxation. Modules 4 through 6 focus on cognitive restructuring and aid the participant in challenging their negative beliefs. Modules 7 through 9 engage the participant in self-guided exposure to images and memories of the trauma. Lastly, the tenth module gives information and tools to prevent relapse into the trauma response. The therapists involved in PTSD Online have less week-to-week interaction with the participants, as they are not providing feedback to them regarding their progress or adherence to the intervention. Instead, therapists conduct telephone interviews at the start of treatment and then provide audio files unique to each participant regarding their specific trauma that help guide them through the intervention online. Although PTSD Online is no longer live, it showed promising effects early on, with positive treatment effects found at a 3-month follow-up.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Internet interventions for post-traumatic stress

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Internet interventions for post-traumatic stress claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Internet interventions for post-traumatic stress before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Internet interventions for post-traumatic stress ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Internet interventions for post-traumatic stress

In research: Internet interventions for post-traumatic stress appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Internet interventions for post-traumatic stress in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Internet interventions for post-traumatic stress is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Internet culture, Post-traumatic stress disorder, Psychotherapy by type, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Internet interventions for post-traumatic stress outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Internet interventions for post-traumatic stress in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Internet interventions for post-traumatic stress means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Internet interventions for post-traumatic stress out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Internet interventions for post-traumatic stress in simple terms?

Why does Internet interventions for post-traumatic stress matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Internet interventions for post-traumatic stress?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Internet interventions for post-traumatic stress.