National Psychotrauma Conference 2025

Abstract
Mental health has been a major concern in the college-aged population. With the ideal counselor-student ratio of 1 to 250 and with the increasing rates of college students with various mental health concerns, the treatment gap between students’ need and the service utilization suggests that more accessible mental health services are needed. The aim of the present study is to design a school-based Transdiagnostic Intervention which can be applied across a range of mental disorders to treat an array of commonly co-occurring symptoms at the same time. Among the two-hundred one (201) students who meet the cut-off score for psychological distress, ninety-seven (97) of the participants agreed and were included in the 2-arm randomized controlled trial. Participants (n=36) assigned to Transdiagnostic Intervention (TI) were assessed before the treatment and at the end of the treatment. Care-As-Usual (CAU) participants’ (n=34) pre-test and post-test were assessed on the same time period with TI participants. After a 2-month period, both the TI and CAU groups resulted in lower psychological distress scores. The effects of TI on intolerance of uncertainty, repetitive negative thinking, experiential avoidance and distress tolerance were evident in the study. The effectiveness of a Transdiagnostic Intervention as a school-based mental health program in low-income, Asian country responds to the call for a shift towards alternative low-intensity treatment approaches that can have a greater public mental health impact.

Abstract
The present study aimed to examine the efficacy of Problem Management Plus (PM+), a low-intensity, cognitive-behavioral therapy-based (CBT) intervention, in improving the mental health of conflict-exposed individuals using a randomized-controlled trial (RCT) design. A sample of 26 individuals participated in the study, randomized into PM+ (i.e., treatment; n = 14) and waitlist control (i.e., WLC; n = 12) groups. Results show that those in the PM + group showed improved mental health outcomes at posttest, while the WLC group did not show any significant improvement. There was also a significant difference in the psychological wellbeing, functionality, posttraumatic stress disorder, anxiety, and depression scores between the two groups at posttest, with the PM + group demonstrating lower severity of symptoms and better wellbeing. The results support the efficacy of PM + as a transdiagnostic CBT-based intervention in the current sample.

Abstract

Studies of children exposed to traumatic situations consistently demonstrated a spectrum of posttraumatic symptoms to include trauma specific fears, anxiety, somatic complaints, avoidance, behavioral and school problems and changed attitudes about the self, others, and the future. The study aims to measure the efficacy of the EMDR-IGI in the reduction of trauma symptoms among children victims of armed conflict in the selected places in Mindanao. The true experimental method of research specifically the pretest-posttest with expanded posttest was used as its design. It uses the Children’s Revised Impact of Events Scale (CRIES-13) and Trauma Symptom Checklist for Children (TSCC) as measures of trauma symptoms. A total of 148 elementary school children in Lanao del Norte, Maguindanao, and North Cotabato were the participants of the study. The pre-test results revealed that symptoms of anxiety, depression, post traumatic stress, and dissociation were all suggestive of difficulty or may represent subclinical symptomatology, while only one – anger – was below the range. The main PTSD symptoms of intrusion, avoidance, and arousal, when summed up, indicates a high probability to obtain a diagnosis of PTSD. The results also revealed that there was a significant difference between the pre-test and post-test mean scores of the experimental group who underwent the treatment protocol as compared to the control group who did not. Post-test and the expanded post-test comparison showed no significant differences. This suggests that the reduction of trauma symptoms in the experimental group remains stable one month after the EMDR-IGI was employed. The study suggests that the employment of EMDR-IGI as a therapeutic modality is effective in reducing symptoms of trauma among children exposed to armed conflict in Mindanao. The degree of mean difference between the pre-test and post-test indicates a large effect size. The findings therefore suggest the use of EMDR-IGI in situations that involve armed conflict or other traumatic situations like natural disasters and other man-made disasters where children are the victims.

Keywords: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, EMDR, Integrative Group Treatment Protocol, Children in Armed Conflict, War, and Trauma