Participants were assigned randomly to either the intervention or control conditions. Intervention participants received the telephone-based CBT intervention. Participants were 35 female and 238 male OEF/OIF veterans who screened positive for PTSD and had never initiated PTSD treatment. Participants were asked about treatment utilization, beliefs about PTSD treatment, and symptoms at months 1, 3, and 6 months subsequent to the baseline telephone assessment. The PTSD Checklist—Military Version was used to assess PTSD and the Patient's Health Questionnaire was used to assess symptoms of depression.
Female veterans who received an intervention were significantly more likely to have attended treatment over the 6-month follow-up period than male veterans who received an intervention (蠂2 = 7.91; df = 3; odds ratio, 3.93; p = .04).
The CBT intervention may be a critical mechanism to engage female veterans in treatment. Further research is needed to understand how to engage male veterans with PTSD in treatment.