Comparing Imaginal Exposure and Imagery Rescripting in Treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

Comparing Imaginal Exposure (IE) and Imagery Rescripting and Reprocessing Therapy (IRRT) in the Treatment of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

Status

Completed

Phases

Study type

Interventional

Source

ClinicalTrials.gov

Registry ID

NCT00891098

Enrollment

Registered

2009-05-01

Start date

2008-11-30

Completion date

2012-11-30

Last updated

2013-06-05

For informational purposes only — not medical advice. Sourced from public registries and may not reflect the latest updates. Terms

Conditions

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

Brief summary

The outcome of trauma treatment (Posttraumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD) may be influenced by which emotions that are predominant among current symptoms, e.g. fear, anger, guilt, shame. Different treatment procedures for processing traumatic memories may resolve different emotions. This study compares two different treatment procedures of working with trauma memories in PTSD treatment (namely, Imaginal Exposure and Imagery Rescripting) in order to test this.

Detailed description

The main objectives of this study are: 1. To assess the relative efficacy of the two procedures in inpatient treatment for PTSD 2. To assess whether the predominant emotions in the traumatic memories moderate the outcome of the different procedures 3. To assess whether theory-derived constructs mediate outcome and whether the mediating relationships are different in the two treatments 4. To provide a theoretical account of the two models 5. To psychometrically evaluate 3 new measures

Interventions

BEHAVIORALImaginal exposure

7 individual sessions of imaginal exposure of trauma memories according to the prolonged exposure treatment manual

BEHAVIORALImagery rescripting

7 individual sessions of imagery rescripting of trauma memories according to the imagery rescripting and reprocessing therapy manual

Study design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Intervention model

PARALLEL

Primary purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

SINGLE (Outcomes Assessor)

Eligibility

Sex/Gender

ALL

Age

20 Years to 65 Years

Healthy volunteers

Inclusion criteria

* DSM-IV diagnosis of PTSD identified as primary diagnosis * Accepts withdrawal of all psychotropic medication

Exclusion criteria

* Extensive dissociative symptoms or current psychosis, * Current suicidal risk, * Extensive current substance or alcohol abuse, or * Ongoing trauma

Design outcomes

Primary

Measure	Time frame
PTSD symptoms	pretreatment, weekly during treatment, posttreatment, followup

Secondary

Measure	Time frame
General psychiatric symptoms	pretreatment, weekly during treatment, postttreatment, followup

Countries

Norway

Outcome results

None listed

Source: ClinicalTrials.gov · Data processed: Feb 4, 2026