Imel, Z. E., Baldwin, S. A., Baer, J. S., Hartzler, B., Dunn, C., Rosengren, D. B., … & Hartzler, B. (2013). Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 81(2), 000.

For this essay, I will use “Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology” by the editor-in-chief Joanne Davilla. The journal publishes articles related to health psychology especially on areas of treatment and prevention in all clinical areas. It is essential to the field of psychology as it provides the researcher with the most relevant, contemporary and important clinical science information. It, therefore, gives the researcher an outlet of the different topics and issues in the developing and ever-changing clinical psychology field.

The article used in this journal is “Meta-Analysis of Dropout in Treatments for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder,” published on January 21, 2013. The problem being investigated as to why many people drop out during the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder. The research was conducted in VA Puget Sound Health Care System, Seattle, Washington; the researchers conducted a meta-analysis of dropout for PTSD in clinical trials amongst the active treatments. Patients undergoing the PTSD were the primary subjects for the study undertaking different treatments; trauma-avoidant treatments such as PCT and trauma-focused interventions. They were chosen to determine the rates of dropout between the two treatments. The researchers used a coding system to separate the treatments from active and control. For the coding process, they asked two trained doctoral students to act as masked raters and evaluate the treatment descriptions independently.

Although the article does not give a direct conclusion on whether trauma-focused treatments are likely to increase treatment dropout among PTSD patients; the findings have shown that there were other different factors associated with the dropout from the PTSD treatment, they include the number of sessions involved, therapist giving the treatment and group modality. The article also shows that many CBTs concentrate on emotional processing by making trauma memory exposure as a major therapeutic ingredient. Additionally, they found that the dropout was higher among trauma-specific treatment than in PCT. The results were not as per the researchers’ expectations because of the various limitations they encountered. First, the results from their “samples” did not show any difference in regards to the dropout rate and the treatment given.

I do not agree with the findings because today there is a high dropout rate in PTSD treatment programs and most of the reasons are multi-factorial. It is true that most people under the trauma-focused PTSD treatment have a higher dropout rate than the present-centered PTSD therapy unlike what the article suggests that there are no differences. The researchers concluded from the results that clinical attention from the therapist to the patient is the primary factor causing dropout from active treatments.  According to me, this finding is not true because treatment dropout varies between active interventions for the disorder which is part of the treatment offered. I would suggest that more research is conducted to compare trauma-avoidant treatments such as PCT and trauma-focused interventions.

Besides its limitation, this article is relevant to psychology because it explains the reasons behind the substantial dropout in Posttraumatic stress disorder treatments in today’s real-world practice. The differences between the two treatments in PSTD and then offers a clinical implication that can be used to reduce the dropouts. It suggests that the therapist offering the therapy has the power to provide a control intervention despite the treatment provided to minimize the dropout rate.