Evidence of the Effectiveness of Behavioral Therapy Psychoeducation in People with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders from the former Yugoslavia

Abstract The main research goal is to examine the effectiveness of psychoeducation on war refugees from the former Yugoslavia who today suffer from PTSD or PTSD with depression. A culture-specific question is integrated as a subordinate question. It investigates differences in the intervention results depending on the host countries Austria and Germany. Da-ta is collected from a random sample (N = 64; 50% of them female; aver-age age 52.6 years) of war refugees from the former Yugoslavia. Half of them respectively live in Germany and Austria. Instruments are the questionnaires GHQ-28, BDI, WHOQOL and HTQ. Reliabilities have been proven. The intervention consists of a manualized psychoeducation. The control group receives psychotherapeutic talk therapy over the same period. Outcomes prove statistically significant that psychoeducation can improve the quality of life of war refugees; that depression symptoms can be reduced by the intervention; that symptoms of depression are more severe before psychoeducation than afterwards; that the quality of social relation-ships improves over time. Assumptions about significant culture-specific differences had to be rejected completely. One of the most important findings of the study is that psychotherapeutic psychoeducation can help war refugees to improve their quality of life with reduced symptoms of depression. At the same time, it has been confirmed that psychoeducation alone is not sufficient as therapy.