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Is The Combined Prolonged Exposure ( Pe ) And Cognitive Processing Therapy ( Traumatic Stress Disorder ( Ptsd ) Essay

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The research question that I am interested in answering is whether a combined prolonged exposure (PE) and cognitive processing therapy (CPT) approach is useful in treating veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The ideal study would include four groups: one to receive PE, one to receive CPT, one to receive both PE and CPT, and one that does not receive an intervention. The groups would consist of an equal 50/50 male to female ratio (half of the participants would be male, half would be female) to control for gender. The participants would be contacted based on information gathered about veterans with PTSD by the local U.S. Department of Veteran’s Affairs offices in Orange County, California.
In this scenario, the independent variable is the type of treatment and the values are the treatment groups. The dependent variables are the patient’s measurable PTSD symptoms, including frequency of dissociative reactions, recurrent distressing dreams, negative alterations in cognitions and mood, and marked alterations in arousal and reactivity (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). The demographic variables in this study are age and ethnicity. The control variables are gender, geographic location, and PTSD.
Measurement of Variables Identified Variable. The Posttraumatic Cognitions Inventory (PTCI) is a scale used to measure a person’s trauma related to their thoughts and beliefs to determine if they have PTSD (Foa, Ehlers, Clark, Tolin, & Orsillo, 1999). For the

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