Interpersonal Psychotherapy for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

Campanini et al. Study.
 In a study in Brazil, Campanini and colleagues 
(2010) used group IPT as adjunctive therapy, adding it to the treatment of  
40 patients with PTSD related to interpersonal violence who had not re-
sponded to at least 12 weeks of pharmacotherapy. As in the Krupnick and 
 

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Is Exposure Therapy Necessary to Treat PTSD? 
7
colleagues study, patients received 16 two- hour IPT sessions in groups of six to 
eight patients. They also received an individual session prior to starting group, 
at mid- treatment, and at the end of treatment. IPT focused on interpersonal 
issues, not on trauma exposure. Patients were maintained on steady doses of 
the medications, consisting mainly of antidepressants.
Thirty- three (83%) completed the study, and all had at least one outcome 
evaluation. CAPS scores fell from 72.3 (standard error [SE]  =  4.7) to 36.5 
(SE = 5.4) (
p <
 .001, effect size = 1.2). There were impressive improvements 
across symptom clusters. Other assessments showed general improvement: the 
mean Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) scores fell from 26.2 (1.8) at baseline to 
13.3 (1.6) (
p <
 .0001, ES = 1.2), essentially from moderately severe depression 
to very mild depression on average. The Social Adjustment Scale (Weissman & 
Bothwell, 1976) improved from 2.59 (0.12) to 2.17 (0.11) (
p <
 .0007, ES = 0.63).
Summary:
 The results of the Campanini study are very encouraging, show-
ing that group IPT had an added effect for patients non- responsive to medi-
cation. On the other hand, this was an open trial, so the improvement cannot 
be determined to be specific to group IPT: without a comparison condition, it 
is unclear whether group IPT fared better than other added treatments might 
have. As a side note, the social adjustment scores are impressively impaired in 
this study: extremely so at the outset, and still quite impaired after treatment, 
despite meaningful improvement. (Lower scores are better, and 1.6 marks the 
normal range [Weissman & Bothwell, 1976].)