A review of the inclusion of ethnoracial groups in empirically supported posttraumatic stress disorder treatment research.

OBJECTIVE

Empirically supported treatments (ESTs) have been criticized for lack of ethnoracial representation, which may limit the generalizability of findings for non-White patients. This study assessed ethnoracial representation in United States-based randomized controlled trials (RCTs) for three evidence-based treatments for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)-Prolonged Exposure (PE), Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), and Eye-Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR).

METHOD

Representation was measured by explicit inclusion of people of color in published PTSD RCTs. Follow-up emails were sent to corresponding authors if full demographic information was not included in the reviewed manuscripts. Information concerning participant remuneration was collected for descriptive purposes.

RESULTS

All three treatment modalities reported White participants as the majority in their sample. PE and CPT trials reported similar levels of ethnoracial diversity, while EMDR efficacy studies reported the least ethnoracial diversity. Across the reviewed studies, with few exceptions, we found low numbers of non-White participants in the majority of reviewed studies, which was compounded by poor or unclear methods of reporting ethnoracial information.

CONCLUSIONS

This study demonstrates that the ESTs for PTSD are not adequately representative of the majority of non-White participants. Future RCTs should place a stronger emphasis on broad ethnoracial diversity in study participants to improve generalizability of findings. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).