Do early interventions prevent PTSD? A systematic review and meta-analysis of the safety and efficacy of early interventions after sexual assault

Objective: To review the safety and efficacy of early interventions after sexual assault in reducing or preventing posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Method: Systematic searches were performed on studies (1980–2018) that examined the efficacy of interventions for PTSD within 3 months after sexual assault.

Results: The review identified 7 studies (n = 350) with high risk of bias that investigated 5 interventions. Only two studies reported on safety. Contact with the authors of six studies provided no indications for the occurrence of adverse events. Two studies reported the efficacy using PTSD diagnosis as dependent variable but found no difference between groups. All studies reported on efficacy using PTSD severity as dependent variable. For the meta-analysis, 4 studies (n = 293) were included yielding significantly greater reductions of PTSD severity than standard care at 2 to 12 months follow-up (g = −0.23, 95% CI [−0.46, 0.00]), but not at 1 to 6 weeks post-intervention (g = −0.28, 95% CI [−0.57, 0.02]). The heterogeneity of the interventions precluded further analyses.

Discussion: Findings suggest that early interventions can lead to durable effects on PTSD severity after sexual assault. However, due to limited availability of data, it is impossible to draw definite conclusions about safety and efficacy of early interventions, and their potential to prevent PTSD.

 



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Reference: 
Veerle Oosterbaan, Milou L. V. Covers, Iva A. E. Bicanic, Rafaële J. C. Huntjens & Ad de Jongh | 2019
In: European Journal of Psychotraumatology, ISSN 2000-8066 | 10 | 1 | 1682932
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/20008198.2019.1682932
Keywords: 
EMDR, EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), Interventions, Literature Review, Meta Analysis, Methodology, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Prevention, Psychotrauma, PTSD (en), Sexual Behavior, Statistical Analysis, Systematic Review