Psychology 3316F/G Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: Alprazolam, Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Exposure Therapy
29 Dec 2017
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Put you on meds and keep you on them forever, bc things will get bad again if you stop using them. It may actually be childhood maltreatment, comorbid depression and suicidality, or the presence of complex ptsd that predict a negative response to medications for ptsd. Unfortunately, few rcts have examined the additive benefits of combination medication treatments, despite such is typically prescribed. Drug and psychotherapy is usually better than drug alone. D-cycloserine (dcs) antituberculosis medication, used to potentiate exposure therapy. Dcs facilitates fear extinction through its action at n-methyl-d-aspartate (nmda) receptors. Despite initial success with regard to dcs augmentation of cbt for social anxiety (guastella et al. , 2008) and height phobia (ressler et al. , 2004), the trials in ptsd have shown mixed results. Virtual reality exposure therapy plus dcs, the benzodiazepine alprazolam, or placebo (rothbaum et al. , 2014) showed no difference between dcs vs. placebo whereas those who received alprazolam had poorest responses (i. e. , worse than placebo)
