Imagery Rehearsal Therapy and mianserin for trauma-affected refugees

Follow-up of a randomized controlled trial

Autores/as

  • Anders Nielsen Competence Centre for Transcultural Psychiatry & Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
  • Felix Klich Competence Centre for Transcultural Psychiatry & Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
  • Stig Bernt Poulsen Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen
  • Jessica Carlsson Competence Centre for Transcultural Psychiatry, Mental Health Center Ballerup, Copenhagen & Department of Clinical Medicine, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
  • Hinuga Sandahl Competence Centre for Transcultural Psychiatry

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7146/torture.v34i2.141339

Palabras clave:

PTSD, refugee, behavioral treatment, sleep, IRT

Resumen

Introduction:

In order to identify the efficacy of treatment interventions for trauma-affected refugees follow-up studies are highly warranted. Hence, the overall aim of this study was to examine the efficacy of sleep-enhancing treatment, IRT and mianserin, in a sample of 219 trauma-affected refugees at six-month follow-up post-treatment.

Methods

Data were derived from a four-armed randomized controlled trial in a sample of trauma-affected refugees with PTSD. All four arms received Treatment as Usual (TAU), an interdisciplinary treatment approach: one group received solely TAU, serving as a control group, whereas the remaining three groups were active-treatment groups receiving add-on treatment with either IRT, mianserin, or a combination.

Mixed models were used to analyze the combinations of the two treatment factors (IRT vs. non-IRT and mianserin vs non-mianserin) and time (baseline vs follow-up and post-treatment vs follow-up) for the primary outcome sleep quality and for several secondary outcome measures.

Results

A total of 36.7% of the participants had been exposed to torture and 44% had been imprisoned.

The only significant effect of IRT was on well-being (measured with WHO-5), where IRT showed higher improvement in well-being six months post-treatment (p = .027). There was no significant effect of mianserin on any of the outcome measures.

Discussion

This follow-up study found improvements from baseline to post-treatment on sleep quality and most of the secondary outcome measures that were maintained for all treatment conditions at the six-month follow-up assessment. A limitation of the study was that a high proportion (53.4%) of the participants did not attend the follow-up evaluation.

The results indicate that add-on IRT-treatment and add-on mianserin-treatment were not superior to TAU at six-month follow-up post-treatment.

Citas

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Front page

Publicado

2024-09-25

Cómo citar

Nielsen, A., Klich, F., Poulsen, S. B., Carlsson , J., & Sandahl, H. (2024). Imagery Rehearsal Therapy and mianserin for trauma-affected refugees: Follow-up of a randomized controlled trial. Torture Journal, 34(2), 79–94. https://doi.org/10.7146/torture.v34i2.141339