Overview
- The randomized trial of 99 healthcare workers, published in The Lancet Psychiatry, compared the imagery-competing task intervention against two control conditions.
- Participants receiving the intervention had 10 times fewer intrusive memories after four weeks than those in the music/podcast or standard-care groups.
- At six months, 70% of those given the intervention reported no intrusive memories, alongside broader improvements in PTSD symptoms.
- The method pairs brief trauma recall and mental-rotation training with paced Tetris play to occupy visuospatial processing and weaken visual intrusions.
- Developed at Uppsala University with P1vital and partners at Cambridge and Oxford, the Wellcome-funded team plans larger, more diverse and potentially non‑guided trials to test scalability.