PE Coach 2 vs Virtual Hope Box (new)

PE Coach is designed to be used during therapy for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) with a health professional who is trained in Prolonged Exposure (PE) therapy. The app will guide you through the exercises assigned by your therapist and allows you to track and record your progress. In addition, the app provides techniques such as controlled breathing that will help you tolerate and decrease your distress. PE Coach will help you remember and track your upcoming therapy sessions. You will be able to audio record your sessions directly onto your phone so you can review them later as part of your treatment. By itself this app is not sufficient to treat PTSD. However, those who are receiving PE treatment can work together with their therapist to use the tools in this app. PE Coach was created by VA’s National Center for PTSD.

The Virtual Hope Box (VHB) is a smartphone application designed for use by patients and their mental health providers as an accessory to treatment. The VHB contains simple tools to help patients with coping, relaxation, distraction, and positive thinking. Patients and providers can work together to personalize the VHB content on the patient's own smartphone according to the patient's specific needs. The patient can then use the VHB away from clinic, continuing to add or change content as needed. Patients can use the VHB to store a variety of rich multimedia content that they find personally supportive in times of need. For example, a patient can include family photos, videos and recorded messages from loved ones, inspirational quotes, music they find especially soothing, reminders of previous successes, positive life experiences and future aspirations, and affirmations of their worth in their VHB. A patient can also collaborate with their provider to create coping cards to use in response to personal problem areas they experience. Finally, the VHB provides the patient with positive activity planning, distraction tools, and interactive relaxation exercises including guided imagery, controlled breathing and muscle relaxation.