In this study, treatment results of three different trauma-focus group day-treatment programs for asylum seekers and refugees with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), were compared with a supportive outpatient psychotherapy group, and a waiting list control group. The group programs differed in the number of nonverbal therapy sessions combined with group psychotherapy and in the number of treatment days per week that the programs were executed.
The results suggest that trauma-focus day-treatment groups lead to a significant decrease of psychopathology compared with the outpatient supportive group psychotherapy and the control group. Within the day-treatment programs, the more nonverbal treatment sessions are applied in a week time, the better the results. Equal treatment effects were obtained with the same number of sessions per week applied over 2 and over 3 days.
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