Current Treatment Approaches for PTSD-Substance Use Disorder Comorbidity

Current Treatment Approaches for PTSD-Substance Use Disorder Comorbidity

Recent years have seen a rise in the number of empirically supported treatments for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). One of the most effective treatments is prolonged exposure (PE), which involves in vivo and imaginal exposure to avoided cues and reminders related to a trauma in order to aid in emotionally processing memories of that traumatic event. However, despite the effectiveness of treatments including PE, efforts to treat PTSD are often complicated by the presence of comorbidities; perhaps most commonly, comorbid substance use disorder (SUD) which affects nearly 50% of people with PTSD.