Revista internacional de salud mental de emergencia y resiliencia humana

Abstracto

Continuance Group Intervention Protocol (CGIP) for a Unique Intervention

Ofir Levi and Yael Shoval-Zukerman

The Objective of this article was to describe in detail the protocol of continuance group intervention (CGI) and to present general efficacy of CGI based on interventions that were done by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) with reserve units that fought in the 2006 Lebanon War. Fifty-one Israeli reserves soldiers exposed to traumatic events participated in the study. They were divided into 5 intervention groups led by five pairs of commanders and trained therapists from the Unit for the Treatment of Combat-related PTSD (UTC-PTSD). PTSD and depression symptoms and levels of functioning were taken at pre-intervention, end of intervention and 6 months after the intervention (follow-up assessment). Analyses found that CGI helped in reducing post-traumatic and depressive symptoms at the end of intervention and 6 months follow-up. It also showed that patients' functioning had significantly improved by the end of intervention and at 6 months followup. It seems that an intervention based on these protocols is suitable for organizations in which there exists a hierarchical structure that includes a managerial echelon and an executive echelon (fire fighters, police, etc.) which embrace a common event but follow-up randomized controlled trials to determine CGI efficacy are needed.