Is adherence to dialectic behaviour therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and cognitive processing therapy related to treatment outcome in PTSD after childhood abuse?

"Disclosure statement Clara Dittmann, Kathlen Priebe, Meike Müller-Engelmann, and Regina Steil receive honoraries for workshops and talks on DBT-PTSD and CPT. No potential conflict of interest was reported by the remaining authors."

"This study was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (01KR1303B)."

"The data for this study originate from a large multicentre randomized controlled clinical trial that compared the efficacy of DBT-PTSD (Bohus et al., ; Steil et al., , ) and CPT (Müller-Engelmann et al., ; Resick et al., ) in 193 female patients with PTSD and emotion regulation difficulties after childhood abuse (RELEASE study, German Clinical Trials Registration ID: DRKS00006095). The study was conducted at three sites in Germany. Patients who met Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) criteria of PTSD following sexual or physical abuse before the age of 18 years, who additionally reported three or more BPD criteria, including criterion 6 (affective instability), and who were available for 1 year of treatment, were randomized to either DBT-PTSD or CPT. Exclusion criteria were a lifetime diagnosis of schizophrenia, bipolar I disorder, mental retardation, or severe psychopathology requiring immediate treatment in a different setting; life-threatening suicide attempts within the past 2 months, current substance dependence, medical conditions contradicting exposure protocol, highly unstable life situation, scheduled residential treatment, and receipt of either CPT or DBT-PTSD treatment during the past year."