Background: In 2009, an aeroplane crashed near Amsterdam. To remedy unmet mental health needs, active outreach was used to identify victims at risk for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression.

Objective: The active outreach strategy was evaluated by examining the accuracy of screening methods in predicting PTSD and depression, self-reported treatment needs, and the extent to which perceived treatment needs predict trajectories of PTSD.

Key Points

Question  How do prolonged exposure therapy, sertraline hydrochloride, and their combination compare with regard to reducing the severity of posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms during 24 weeks of treatment?

What the chapters of this book have in common is that they explore cultural aspects of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD); however the current chapter is slightly different because of its emphasis on cross-national patterns and the relevance of country-level factors that turn out to be risk and protective factors themselves.

Research showed that more than 30% of patients with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) do not benefit from evidence-based treatments: Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). These are patients with prolonged and multiple traumatization, with poor verbal memory, and patients with emotional over-modulation. Retelling traumatic experiences in detail is poorly tolerated by these patients and might be a reason for not starting or not completing the recommended treatments.