Activity spaces of women with PTSD do not appear to change throughout psychotherapy

What is it about?

A common mental health condition following childhood abuse is posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). PTSD is associated with avoidance behavior, which might be reflected in patients’ restricted activity spaces. A previous study has suggested restricted activity spaces in women with PTSD compared to women without a history of childhood abuse. We used global positioning system (GPS) tracking in a clinical trial to examine how treatment effects of two kinds of psychotherapy map to changes in patients’ daily lives. We examined the distance travelled from home and time spent away from home before and after 12 months of psychotherapy over the course of one week each. In contrast to our hypotheses, we did not find any changes in activity spaces from before to after 12 months of psychotherapy. This is especially striking because the analysis of clinical data in the same patients revealed significant treatment effects (i.e., reduced symptom severity) at the end of treatment. While patients reported decreased symptom severity, their behavioral data collected via GPS tracking still showed restricted activity spaces in daily life.

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Photo by Iliya Jokic on Unsplash

Photo by Iliya Jokic on Unsplash