ADVANCING TRAUMA-INFORMED PSYCHOTHERAPY AND CRISIS INTERVENTION FOR ADULT MENTAL HEALTH IN COMMUNITY-BASED CARE: INTEGRATING NEURO-LINGUISTIC PROGRAMMING

Abstract

This quantitative study examined the effectiveness of an integrated trauma-informed psychotherapy and crisis intervention approach, incorporating structured communication-based techniques consistent with Neuro-Linguistic Programming–oriented delivery, within a community-based adult mental health setting. A quasi-experimental pretest–posttest design was applied to data collected from 180 adult service users receiving routine outpatient psychotherapy and crisis stabilization services. Standardized instruments were administered at baseline and post-intervention to assess trauma-related symptom severity, acute psychological distress, emotional regulation capacity, distress tolerance, perceived control, coping efficacy, psychosocial functioning, and quality of life. Internal consistency reliability across all multi-item scales was acceptable to excellent, with Cronbach’s alpha values ranging from .81 to .94 at baseline and .83 to .94 post-intervention. Descriptive analyses indicated substantial baseline clinical burden, with 62.2% of participants scoring above clinical thresholds for trauma-related symptoms and 67.2% exhibiting elevated emotional regulation difficulties. Post-intervention results demonstrated consistent improvement across all constructs, including reductions in mean trauma symptom severity from 48.6 to 34.2 and acute psychological distress from 21.8 to 14.1, alongside increases in distress tolerance from 31.6 to 39.8 and quality-of-life scores from 46.8 to 58.4. Multivariate regression analyses showed that therapy session dosage was a significant positive predictor of improvement across outcomes, explaining up to 46% of the variance in trauma symptom change and 38% of the variance in psychosocial functioning change. Higher crises contact frequency was negatively associated with outcome improvement and positively associated with crisis recurrence. Mechanism-consistent patterns were observed, with changes in emotional regulation, perceived control, and coping efficacy significantly associated with reductions in trauma symptoms and gains in functional recovery. Subgroup analyses indicated differential improvement based on baseline trauma severity, comorbidity status, and socioeconomic indicators. Overall, the findings provide empirical support for integrated trauma-informed and crisis-oriented care models in community adult mental health services, demonstrating multidimensional recovery patterns across psychological, emotional, functional, and quality-of-life domains under routine clinical conditions.