Seeking Safety Therapy for Co-Occurring Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Substance Use Disorder: A Case Study in Iran

Literature documents the high prevalence of trauma and posttraumatic stress disorder (OTSD) in individuals with substance use disorders, which complicate the clinical profile of patients and present challenges for treatment providers. Although several evidence-based integrated therapies are developed for comorbid PTSD/SUD (substance use disorder), there is a considerable gap addressing this co-occurrence and none of such practices are studied yet on such patients. Through A-B-A single subject design, the current study aimed at exploring the effectiveness of seeking safety (SS), an integrative evidence-based therapy for PTSD/SUD, to reduce PTSD and SUD symptoms in a 32-year-old female with both disorders. Measures of PTSD checklist (PTSD checklist-civilian; PCL-C), addiction severity index (ASI), brief symptom inventory (BSI), and coping inventory for stressful situations (CISS-21) were completed by the participant at baseline, intervention, and 2-month follow-up. Results were analyzed through visual analysis and computing 3 effect size indices including standardized mean difference (SMD), mean baseline reduction (MBLR), and percent of non-overlapping data (PND). Clinically significant reductions in PTSD symptoms, psychological distress, and ASI scores, as well as improvement in coping skills were observed at intervention phase and maintained at 2-month follow-up, which indicated that the participant benefited from SS.