The Evidence for Present‐Centered Therapy as a Treatment for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

To examine the evidence for present‐centered therapy (PCT) as a treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), 5 randomized clinical trials that compared PCT to an existing evidence‐based treatment for PTSD were reviewed. A meta‐analysis was used to estimate between‐treatment differences on targeted measures, secondary measures, and dropout. PCT was found to be as efficacious as the comparison evidence‐based treatment in 3 of the 5 trials, and in the 2 cases where a no‐treatment condition was included, PCT was superior, with large effect sizes for targeted variables ( d = 0.88, 0.74, and 1.27). When results were aggregated using meta‐analysis, effects for PCT versus an evidence‐based treatment for both targeted and secondary measures were small and nonsignificant ( d = 0.13 and d = 0.09, respectively). As well, the dropout rate for PCT was significantly less than for the comparison evidence‐based treatments (14.3% and 31.3%, respectively). It appears that PCT is an efficacious and acceptable treatment for PTSD.