IRCT2013050313211N1 IRCT 2013-05-29 Mental Health Research Network The treatment of mental disorders in women exposed to domestic violence Efficacy of Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET) in a Sample of Iranian Women Exposed to Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) -A randomized trial- 2013-05-31 anticipated 40 Complete https://irct.ir/trial/13149 interventional Randomization: Randomized, Blinding: Double blinded, Placebo: Not used, Assignment: Parallel, Purpose: Treatment. N/A Condition 1: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Condition 2: Depression. Intervention 1: Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET). NET is a treatment approach that was developed for the treatment of PTSD resulting from organized violence. NET was developed by a research group of the University of Konstanz (Schauer, Neuner, & Elbert, 2005, 2011) as a standardized short-term approach based on the principles of cognitive behavioral exposure therapy and testimony therapy by adapting it to meet the needs of traumatized survivors of war and torture. In NET, the patient repeatedly talks about the most arousing traumatic events in detail while re-experiencing the emotions associated with this event. In the process, the patient constructs a narration of his life, focusing on the detailed report of the traumatic experiences. The majority of people habituates and loses the emotional response to the traumatic memory, which consequently leads to a remission of PTSD symptoms. Also, by using NET we are able to carefully step forward through the complete biography of our patients’ lives in chronological order. In telling the story, the patient is exposed to the sensory information that accompanies the memory and to the image of the events themselves. The patient actually triggers his or her own fear network in the telling by narrating the fragments throughout the course of therapy and he or she is able to reweave the events back into a cool-system framework controlling the triggers present with the hot memories. As a result, the accompanying anxiety, which evolved from the strangeness of dissociative fragments, is defused. All somatosensory percepts (physical sensations), cognitions (thoughts), and emotions relevant to the fear network and involved in the traumatic sequences of memory will be comprehensively uncovered in detail as the narrative unfolds. The course of events is established (in time and place), labeled and transferred into speech until a meaningful and consistent narrative is reached. All traumatic events are revisited until their horrifying impact dissolves. In other words, NET focuses on both the habituation of emotional responses to the memories of the traumatic events and on the construction of a detailed narrative of the events and their consequences. A general guideline for the organization of sessions can be outlined as follows; Session 1: Diagnosis and psycho-education. Session 2: lifeline exercise beginning with the birth and ending with the future in order to define and locate traumatic and non-traumatic events. Session 3: Exposure to most pressing traumatic event. Subsequent sessions: (Re) reading of the narrative collected in previous sessions and continuing the narration/exposure of subsequent traumatic life events. Final session: Rereading and handing-over of the complete narration. The women in the NET group will go to the clinic once a week, and will have total of 6-8 these sessions. In addition, in accordance with the NET manual, at the end of each session, a written account of what is told throughout the session is composed by the therapist, which will be read to the client at the beginning of the next session for her approval of the content of the account. Upon completion of the treatment, a brief biography of the client and her traumatic and non-traumatic experiences which she has told will be given to her. Intervention 2: Treatment-as-usual. Treatment-as-usual can be defined as the commonly used psychotherapy for abused women in Iran, such as medical therapy and/or supportive psychotherapy. After participants are randomly allocated to the treatment-as-usual group, the researcher will ask the therapists of this group to write a summary report of the treatment procedure after each session and submit it to the researcher. Thus, the researcher will be supervising the procedures of the treatment-as-usual sessions and will record the treatment procedure.