2017 Chapters (Layout Features)

Interpersonal Psychotherapy for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Adapting IPT for PTSD

Markowitz, John C.

This manual adapted Interpersonal Psychotherapy for use by therapists in a 14-week treatment study of chronic posttraumatic stress disorder. It is in- tended as a guideline for treatment, as an extension of the basic IPT manual (Weissman et al., 2007), and as an adjunct to IPT supervision. Although IPT for PTSD does involve some adaptations from standard IPT for major depres- sive disorder, if you have previously used IPT, the basic approach is the same and should feel familiar to you. This was certainly the experience of thera- pists in our randomized trial (Markowitz et al., 2015), who had previously treated major depression. When they began the study in 2008, we told the therapists that an open trial of IPT for PTSD had yielded very encouraging results (Bleiberg & Markowitz, 2005), as had a randomized trial of group IPT for PTSD (Krupnick et al., 2008).