Building Experience for Treating Trauma and Enhancing Resilience (BETTER)

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a significant problem among underserved populations who receive care in community health centers. Several evidence-based psychotherapies for PTSD are not practical given the time and resources required for these approaches. This research will examine whether Written Exposure Therapy (WET), a brief and well-tolerated therapy approach, delivered within collaborative primary care is effective and can be implemented successfully within a collaborative care (CC) intervention. The primary aims of the proposed study are to evaluate the effectiveness and implementation of delivering WET into CoCM to improve the management of PTSD among underserved primary care patients in Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs).

Inclusion Criteria: * Patients will be included if they are 18 years of age or older, speak English or Spanish, have a scheduled or walk-in appointment with a participating primary care provider (PCP), have no obvious physical or cognitive impairment that would make them unable to complete the assessment (as indicated by confusion or inability to understand the questions), and consider the FQHC to be their usual source of care. Exclusion Criteria: * Patients will be excluded if they have active psychosis (as indicated by inability to concentrate, having delusions or hallucinations) or high suicide risk (as indicated by having a current plan or means).