Teaching Trauma-Focused Exposure Therapy for PTSD: Critical Clinical Lessons for Novice Exposure Therapists.

Over the past 10 years, our experiences delivering exposure therapy and teaching clinicians to deliver exposure therapy for PTSD have taught us some important lessons. We will focus on lessons learned as we have attended to clinicians' experiences as they begin to implement and apply the therapy. Specifically, we highlight common therapist expectations including the beliefs that the exposure therapy requires a new set of clinical skills, therapists themselves will experience a high level of distress hearing about traumatic events, and clients will become overly distressed.

Racial disparities in trauma exposure, psychiatric symptoms, and service use among female patients in Veterans Affairs primary care clinics.

Objective: We sought to compare female African-American (n = 84) and Caucasian (n = 99) veterans from primary care clinics at 4 Veterans Affairs Medical Centers (VAMCs) on rates of trauma, posttraumatic stress disorder, other psychiatric diagnoses, functional status, and use of VA services and disability benefits.

Methods: Analyses were based on a cross-sectional, epidemiologic design incorporating self-report measures, structured interviews, and chart reviews.

Results: With the exception of higher rates of child sexual abuse among Caucasian women and higher rates of physical assault among African-American women, there were no other statistically significant racial differences across analyses.