Early Prevention of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

Overview

Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre is Canada's largest trauma centre, treating 1,100 patients annually. A traumatic experience can lead to post-traumatic stress disorder, which increases hospital stays, emergency visits and disability. Despite developing leadership to manage a "Code Orange" mass trauma, Sunnybrook lacks guidelines in the psychological management of patients who have experienced trauma. The department of psychiatry currently holds a Traumatic Brain Injury clinic and PTSD services for youth but lacks both immediate intervention, prevention and adult services. This research will enable us to gain best evidence expertise to develop guidelines as well as a sustainable PTSD treatment program, with clear outcomes to assess effectiveness, psychiatric morbidity, use of healthcare, disability and substance abuse. The five world-expert-consensus intervention resilience based principles will be operationalized in guidelines for the management of trauma patients, their caregivers and in routine nursing and trauma team care from the Emergency to the ward, and discharge, through to outpatient care. It is hypothesized that this will improve the psychological recovery of patients at risk of developing PTSD after a traumatic injury. In addition, early screening and intervention for increased risk of PTSD will be implemented one month after the trauma. It is hypothesized that such trauma informed psychological management, early screening and expert treatment using prolonged exposure will reduce hospital stays, functional disability, as well as longer-term psychiatric morbidity, including substance abuse.

The study is a longitudinal interventional study, with a control group who have treatment for their trauma with no guidelines for psychological management, staff training, patient and family intervention/education. In the intervention group, who will have all of the above, participants will be stratified according to risk factors for PTSD and randomized 1:1 in "low risk" and "at risk" groups-those who will have a prolonged exposure intervention and those who will not.