BACKGROUND This article provides a description of the rationale, design, and methods of a multisite clinical trial which evaluates the potential benefits of an evidence-based psychosocial treatment, STAIR Narrative Therapy, among women with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) related to interpersonal violence who are seeking services in public sector community mental health clinics. This is th...

Objective: to explore barriers to the involvement of community midwives in identifying women in early pregnancy as potential participants in the XX, a randomised controlled trial of a new intervention to provide health and parenting support to potentially vulnerable women. Design: descriptive qualitative investigation using semi-structured audio-recoded interviews. Setting: community midwifery ...

PURPOSE To assess the long-term effect of a randomized community-based trial of smoking cessation and to examine the effect of exposure to large state-based tobacco-control programs on smoking cessation. DESIGN Longitudinal tobacco-use telephone surveys conducted in 1988, 1993, and 2001. SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS Baseline smokers (6603) from 20 communities in 9 states completed a survey in 2...

BACKGROUND There is substantial evidence that cognitive therapy is an effective intervention for the treatment of major depressive disorder. Although dynamic psychotherapies have been widely studied and are commonly practiced worldwide, there are few randomized comparisons of cognitive therapy and dynamic therapy for major depressive disorder. METHODS We are completing data collection on a ra...

Psychotropic medications are often crucial in restoring criminal defendants to competency to stand trial. However, some defendants committed for competency evaluations or restoration refuse medications. Thus, psychiatric professionals who work in jails and secure hospitals, and even in community mental health settings, may encounter questions about involuntarily medicating patients who are inco...

The ethics of clinical research requires equipoise--a state of genuine uncertainty on the part of the clinical investigator regarding the comparative therapeutic merits of each arm in a trial. Should the investigator discover that one treatment is of superior therapeutic merit, he or she is ethically obliged to offer that treatment. The current understanding of this requirement, which entails t...

In Focus Estimating Efficacy in a Randomized Trial with Product Nonadherence: Application of Multiple Methods to a Trial of Preexposure Prophylaxis for HIV Prevention Feasible, Efficient and Necessary, without Exception – Working with Sex Workers Interrupts HIV/STI Transmission and Brings Treatment to Many in Need Recruiting Male Partners for Couple HIV Testing and Counselling in Malawi's Optio...

Clinical trials investigating therapies for acutely and critically ill and injured patients in the earliest phases of treatment often can only be performed under regulations allowing for exception from informed consent (EFIC) for emergency research. Implementation of these regulations in multicenter clinical trials involves special challenges and opportunities. The Rapid Anticonvulsant Medicati...

Collaborative Web search (CWS) is a community-based approach to Web search that supports the sharing of past result selections among a group of related searchers so as to personalize result-lists to reflect the preferences of the community as a whole. In this paper, we present the results of a recent live-user trial which demonstrates how CWS elicits high levels of participation and how the sea...