Context: Austin Health's Veterans’ Psychiatry Unit (VPU) offers both on-site and community-based treatment programs for veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). While program content is essentially the same, the on-site program involves an intensive residential treatment phase, while the veteran lives at home throughout the course of the community-based program.
Objectives: Given the increasing promotion of community-based treatment for PTSD, the aim of the study was to conduct a preliminary investigation of the role of treatment site in program efficacy, and long term treatment outcomes.
Key messages: In a comparison of baseline measures by treatment site, it was found that the on-site treatment group (N = 285) scored significantly higher on measures of PTSD than the community sample (N = 37) (p < .001). The two groups did not differ in measures of alcohol use (p = .394). Despite such differences, a comparison of nine month post-program outcome data revealed that neither PCL-M (p = .103), nor AUDIT (p = .981) scores varied with treatment site. In a repeated measures analysis, there was a significant main effect of both time and group across a linear combination of the two variables. However, further analysis revealed that such changes were primarily due to the change in PCL-M score over time, and the difference in PCL-M score changes between groups.
Conclusions: Results support the effectiveness of both on-site and community programs, while also suggesting that veterans who demonstrate more severe symptoms benefit from receiving treatment on-site.
