PTSD among Vietnam veterans: An early look at treatment outcome using direct therapeutic exposure

Vietnam combat veteran inpatients were evaluated after being treated in a PTSD special treatment unit. Selected pretreatment measures that included mental and physical problems, combat variables, PTSD symptoms, and the standard MMPI scales found no clinically meaningful differences between a group that was found to be “successes” and another group found to be “failures,” based on predetermined cutoff scores on the VETS scale, a reliable outcome measure for veteran patients. At 3 months post‐therapy, a significantly greater number of subjects treated with Direct Therapeutic Exposure (DTE) (flooding therapy) as compared to another group treated with a more conventional individual therapy, were identified as “successes” as opposed to “failures,” based on the VETs scale. Also, the number of “failures” was greater for those treated with the more conventional therapy and the number of “successess” was greater for those treated with DTE, when compared to all other subjects in the sample. These preliminary results were interpreted as indicating that DTE, when offered as part of an inpatient milieu, shows promise as an effective treatment for chronic/severe combat veteran PTSD sufferers.