Predictors of PTSD Treatment Effectivity in Transcultural Mental Health Care

Abstract

In mental health care in Western countries, ethnic minorities are confronted with different obstacles. In the current study, the most used treatments for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) - prolonged exposure and eye-movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) - were examined on their applicability in a transcultural mental health care context by investigating predictors of effective treatment. Based on availability in clients’ records and previous research, the following predictors were investigated: cultural background (operationalized as country of origin), level of education, and the prevalence of depressive symptoms. The prevalence of psychotic symptoms had to be excluded of the logistic regression model due to statistical reasons. The analysis of 39 clients’ reports (Mage = 35.13, SDage = 9.86; female: n = 15) showed that none of the predictors can predict the likelihood of effective PTSD treatment in a transcultural population. Although these results should be interpreted with care due to their statistical limitations, the results show that the general knowledge of PTSD treatment might not be transferable to ethnic minority populations. This understanding is supported by additional relevant findings: both the very few cases of effective treatment at all (18% of all cases), as the high drop-out rate (46% of all cases), indicate that the standard EMDR and exposure therapy might not be fitting approaches of PTSD treatment in transcultural mental health care.