How Effective Is Stress Inoculation Training For People With Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder?

Stress inoculation training is one of many therapeutic approaches that can be used successfully in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder. Because it's quite a bit different from the "lay on a couch and talk about your feelings and childhood" kind of therapy you may be expecting, it may particularly appeal to people with PTSD who aren't prepared to discuss the intimate details of their trauma with a stranger.

How does it work, and how helpful is stress inoculation traing for people with PTSD?

What exactly is Stress Inoculation Training?

This approach takes the fact that stressors can come in many different forms — like one-time, time-limited, chronic, or recurring, and those you can do something about as well as those you can't — into account and tailors the treatment to the circumstances. By exposing you to stress in a controlled environment, it teaches you to cope with it more effectively. 

Stress inoculation training has four phases:

• Learning how you currently react to stress and how this impacts your daily ability to function as well as your emotional health. 
• Becoming familiar with relaxation and grounding techniques that enable you to control your stress, rather than the other way around. 
• In phase three, you learn about affirmations, such as "I am a human being deserving of respect and dignity".
• In phase four, you put your nearly-acquired skills into action as you walk through stressful scenarios to help you get used to a new, more controlled, way of coping. 

Stress inoculation treatment is used in the treatment of PTSD, both as a stand-alone approach and in combination with other therapeutic approaches. Its application is much wider, however.

Anyone going through significant stress may benefit, but stress inoculation training is more often used to help people who have recently experienced a trauma (in a bid to help prevent PTSD) as well as folks in inherently stressful professions, such as law enforcement or the military, as a preventative measure. 

What do I need to know about stress inoculation training for people with post-traumatic stress disorder?

Stress inoculation training falls, like so many effective treatments for PTSD, under the umbrella of cognitive behavioral therapy. Like many other kinds of psychotherapy, it lasts around three months, delivered in weekly sessions that last between an hour and 90 minutes. These sessions may take place in group settings or one-on-one with a therapist. As with many kinds of psychotherapy, stress inoculation treatment will involve homework. 

Stress inoculation therapy isn't like other kinds of therapies, though.

You will not be required to talk about your traumatic experiences in detail, and may actually be asked not to do that. Stress inoculation training entirely focuses on your sources of stress and how you can better cope with them, such as by grounding yourself in the here and now and distinguishing between sources of stress you can proactively change and those you can do nothing about.

In the case of stressors you can do nothing to change, trying to find solutions can be harmful and it may be emotionally healthier to find ways to accept and adapt. This is also something you learn about in stress inoculation training.

Note that stress inoculation training does not teach you any "one and only correct coping strategy", but rather offers you a variety of options that serve mental health. They may include mindfulness meditation, breathing exercises, and spritual coping, but also humor, reframing the situation, and turning your attention elsewhere.

The fact that mild to moderate exposure to stressors is part of the therapy may be slightly intimdating, but this part takes place after you learn coping skills — to reinfoce the skills you have gained in the training. 

Is stress inoculation therapy effective?

Stress inoculation training isn't necessarily widely available — US Veterans Affairs, for instance, notes that access to this therapeutic approach is low. However, if you can get it, as a person with PTSD, you should consider stress inoculation training strongly.

This makes it one of the most effective treatments for PTSD out there, and it is especially suitable for people who prefer practical approaches to delving into all the gory details of their pasts with a stranger (albeit a qualified one), and spilling out all their inner pain. If you're not someone who is necessarily averse to that, though, stress inoculation training can certainly be combined with other approaches to treating PTSD, such as psychodynamic therapy, cognitive processing therapy, or prolonged exposure therapy.