Therapeutic Cannabis in the treatment of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: Protocol for a Scoping Review

Abstract

BACKGROUND:
Recent results from several studies seem to find improvements in the symptomatology of PTSD patients undergoing treatment with therapeutic cannabis (THC, CBD and NABILONE). However, some reviews have highlighted that different methods of use and different forms of the therapeutic agent were found, and that the included studies presented various biases. Given this evidence, it makes sense to conduct a new Scoping Review aimed at mapping the primary studies in the literature reporting evidence of efficacy of cannabis for the treatment of PTSD, in order to describe the mode of use, dosage, patient adherence to therapy and some specific characteristics of the sample that could be relevant such as previous alcohol and drug abuse and adherence to previous therapies.

METHODS AND ANALYSIS:
This scoping review will follow the methodology of the Joanna Briggs Institute, contained in the JBI Manual for Evidence Synthesis. The literature search will be performed through PubMed, Scopus, Web Of Science, Cochrane Library, Elsevier, Psycinfo databases; in addition, grey literature sources will be consulted. Only clinical trials (randomised and non-randomised) and quasi-experimental studies will be included in Italian or English language and available in full text version. Key information of the studies will be extracted and presented both in narrative and summary form with tables to give an adequate overview of the contents of the existing scientific literature on the topic.