The Denver Post
By The Denver Post
Article Last Updated: 10/19/2007 12:44:59 AM MDT
WASHINGTON The majority of treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder that are used on hundreds of thousands of veterans lack rigorous scientific evidence that they are effective, says a report issued Thursday by a panel of the federal government’s top scientists.
The report by the National Academies emphasizes that the therapies might not be useless. Rather, it says, the evidence is weak when it comes to drawing any kind of conclusion about most of them. The report does find strong evidence that one particular treatment known as exposure therapy was effective; the technique asks patients to repeatedly reimagine traumatic events as a way to make the events lose their potency. In a statement, the Department of Veterans Affairs said it was ramping up its ability to provide this therapy to patients.
But the panel failed to find evidence that any medication was effective in treating PTSD – this included the drugs Paxil and Zoloft.