Trial reportJournal of consulting and clinical psychology2015
Combining seeking safety with sertraline for PTSD and alcohol use disorders: A randomized controlled trial.
Trial report in Journal of consulting and clinical psychology, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to trial NCT00262223 (Combined Treatment for Alcohol-Dependent Individuals With PTSD), which is not on this map. Cited by 52 papers, 9 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Combined Treatment for Alcohol-Dependent Individuals With PTSD
Who cites it
52 citing papers in PubMed, 9 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 92 citations in OpenAlex.
- Increased Prevalence of Childhood Complex Trauma in Comorbid Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Substance Use Disorders Compared to Either Disorder Alone: A Systematic Review.Early intervention in psychiatry · 2025Pooled it
- Project harmony: A systematic review and network meta-analysis of psychotherapy and pharmacologic trials for comorbid posttraumatic stress, alcohol, and other drug use disorders.Psychological bulletin · 2024Pooled it
- Seeking safety intervention for comorbid post-traumatic stress and substance use disorder: A meta-analysis.Brain and behavior · 2023Pooled it
- Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors in the treatment of depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder in substance use disorders: a Bayesian meta-analysis.European journal of clinical pharmacology · 2022Pooled it
- A systematic review of gene-by-intervention studies of alcohol and other substance use.Development and psychopathology · 2021Pooled it
- Long-term outcomes of psychological treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Psychological medicine · 2021Pooled it
- Long-term harms from previous use of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors: A systematic review.The International journal of risk & safety in medicine · 2019Pooled it
- Meta-analysis with standardized effect sizes from multilevel and latent growth models.Journal of consulting and clinical psychology · 2017Pooled it
- Psychological therapies for post-traumatic stress disorder and comorbid substance use disorder.The Cochrane database of systematic reviews · 2016Pooled it
- Indirect effects of Seeking Safety plus sertraline on alcohol use: The mediating role of reductions in posttraumatic stress disorder symptom severity.Journal of traumatic stress · 2026Trial
- A Randomized Controlled Trial for Gambling Disorder and PTSD: Seeking Safety and CBT.Journal of gambling studies · 2023Trial
- Patient- and therapist-rated alliance predict improvements in posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms and substance use in integrated treatment.Clinical psychology & psychotherapy · 2023Trial
- Implementation and evaluation of a two-eyed seeing approach using traditional healing and seeking safety in an indigenous residential treatment program in Northern Ontario.International journal of circumpolar health · 2022Trial
- Substance use predictors of attendance among veterans in integrated PTSD and alcohol use disorder treatment.Journal of substance abuse treatment · 2021Trial
- Trial
- Effectiveness of Peer-Delivered Trauma Treatment in a Rural Community: A Randomized Non-inferiority Trial.Community mental health journal · 2019Trial
- Predictors of dropout in concurrent treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder and alcohol dependence: Rate of improvement matters.Behaviour research and therapy · 2016Trial
- The impact of treatment condition and the lagged effects of PTSD symptom severity and alcohol use on changes in alcohol craving.Behaviour research and therapy · 2016Trial
- Impaired but now diagnosable: Combining analytic frameworks for incorporating symptom weighting in the classification of full-threshold and subthreshold posttraumatic stress disorder.Journal of traumatic stress · 2026Article
- A Framework for Estimating Posttreatment Moderation of Treatment-by-Dosage Effects in Individual-Patient Meta-Analysis: An Illustration Using Project Harmony.Clinical psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors at 3 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
objectiveThe current study marks the first randomized controlled trial to test the benefit of combining Seeking Safety (SS), a present-focused cognitive-behavioral therapy for co-occurring posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and alcohol use disorder (AUD), with sertraline, a front-line medication for PTSD shown to also impact drinking outcomes.
methodSixty-nine participants (81% female; 59% African American) with primarily childhood sexual (46%) and physical (39%) trauma exposure, and drug dependence in addition to AUD were randomized to receive a partial-dose (12 sessions) of SS with either sertraline (n = 32; M = 7 sessions) or placebo (n = 37; M = 6 sessions). Assessments conducted at baseline, end-of-treatment, 6- and 12-months posttreatment measured PTSD and AUD symptom severity.
resultsBoth groups demonstrated significant improvement in PTSD symptoms. The SS plus sertraline group exhibited a significantly greater reduction in PTSD symptoms than the SS plus placebo group at end-of-treatment (M difference = -16.15, p = .04, d = 0.83), which was sustained at 6- and 12-month follow-up (M difference = -13.81, p = .04, d = 0.71, and M difference = -12.72, p = .05, d = 0.65, respectively). Both SS groups improved significantly on AUD severity at all posttreatment time points with no significant differences between SS plus sertraline and SS plus placebo.
conclusionResults support the combining of a cognitive-behavioral therapy and sertraline for PTSD/AUD. Clinically significant reductions in both PTSD and AUD severity were achieved and sustained through 12-months follow-up, Moreover, greater mean improvement in PTSD symptoms was observed across all follow-up assessments in the SS plus sertraline group. (PsycINFO Database Record
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.