'Prolonged Exposure' Therapy Best for Female Vets With PTSD

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"I hope that our findings encourage people to seek this kind of training," Schnurr said. "The VA has been very supportive of this study and its findings and is looking into the question of how to disseminate the treatment."

"We're certainly aware of the research, and the department is looking at ways we can implement it across the system," added Matt Burns, a spokesman for the Department of Veterans Affairs in Washington, D.C.

This study, which is in the Feb. 28 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, randomly assigned 277 female veterans and seven active-duty personnel with PTSD to receive either prolonged exposure therapy or present-centered therapy.

Both were applied in 10 weekly 90-minute sessions.

Participants were recruited from nine VA medical centers, two VA readjustment counseling centers and one military hospital.

Women in the prolonged exposure group were more likely to no longer meet the criteria for having PTSD (41 percent vs. 27.8 percent, respectively) and were more than twice as likely to achieve total remission (15.2 percent vs. 6.9 percent).

Almost 69 percent of all participants identified sexual trauma as the worst type of trauma they had experienced in their lifetime. On average, the first sexual trauma had occurred 23 years before.

However, more than 70 percent of participants had also experienced sexual trauma in the military.

"That is horrifying," Leserman said. "We clearly need to address this issue within the military. Military policy makers and the military itself have to really look into what is going on with sexual violence, and what we can do to address this."

But Schnurr said of the sexual trauma numbers that the study was not a random sample. "Our study enrolled women who have PTSD and who are seeking care for PTSD, and that, by definition, would be a select sample," she said.

Schnurr added: "We also know from other studies that sexual trauma is especially likely to lead to PTSD, so it wasn't surprising."

More information

To learn more about PTSD, head to the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health.