Internet interventions for post-traumatic stress have grown in popularity due to the limits that many patients face in their ability to seek therapy to treat their symptoms.
[2] Internet interventions can increase the possibility that those who suffer from PTSD can seek help by eliminating these barriers to treatment.
[2] Most of the internet interventions for PTSD currently being studied use cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) tenants to provide treatment.
[10] The resources available to patients participating in a self-guided intervention are typically crisis lines, emergency services, and outside sources in which the person can seek help or treatment.
[6] The existing interventions have been shown to be effective in reducing symptoms of PTSD with varying causes such as war in Iraq[6][7] or miscarriages.
[6] One example of an internet intervention with a high level of therapist involvement is Interapy, which was created and named by Alfred Lange and a team of psychologists at the University of Amsterdam in 2003.
[11] So far, Interapy shows promising results for participants in the Netherlands, Germany, and Iraq, and has been shown to have positive effects on PTSD symptoms as far as three months from the end of treatment.
[4] The therapists involved in PTSD Online have less week-to-week interaction with the participants, as they are not providing feedback to them regarding their progress or adherence to the intervention.
[4] Instead, therapists conduct telephone interviews at the start of treatment and then provide audio files unique to each participant regarding their specific trauma that help guide them through the intervention online.
[4] David Ivarsson and a team of psychologists in Sweden created an unnamed internet intervention for PTSD in 2014 that required very little therapist involvement.
[9] It was utilized as a randomized control trial (RCT) to investigate if it would be a feasible tool for reducing PTSD symptoms in veterans.
[9] This intervention is meant to treat veterans who have recently moved back home from deployment, and have been using excessive amounts of substances.
[9] This intervention applies CBT tools to treat veterans, which means it focuses on challenging distorted cognitions related to trauma, increasing coping and self-management skills, and preventing social isolation.
[9] Those who engaged in this online intervention felt it could decrease this stigma and enable veterans to feel comfortable enough in seeking psychological services.