Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a psychiatric disease that may develop after experiencing a traumatic event and it is characterized by resistance to extinction of the traumatic memory. Psychotherapy, which mainly focuses on favoring fear memory extinction, represents the first-line treatment for PTSD. However, this approach is not always successful. Emerging evidence suggests the importance of a social support in alleviating PTSD symptomatology
however, the efficacy of group therapy for PTSD remains controversial. Here, we evaluated the impact of social support on the efficacy of fear extinction sessions in a chronic PTSD-like rat model. We tested the hypothesis that the presence of a social partner during temporally spaced extinction sessions (to mimic the presence of a social support during therapy) or after the extinction sessions in a neutral environment (to mimic the presence of a social support outside of the therapy setting) would ameliorate long-term PTSD-like symptomatology. Extinction sessions were carried out under different conditions: (i) alone
(ii) with a social partner never exposed to the trauma
(iii) with a trauma-exposed partner. In a separate set of experiments, rats were exposed to the extinction sessions alone and, immediately thereafter, paired with a social partner, as indicated above, in a different context. Extinction sessions carried out in the presence of a social partner never exposed to the traumatic experience rescued long-term trauma-induced PTSD-like symptomatology. We provide evidence of beneficial effects of a "healthy" social support during extinction sessions in ameliorating both immediate and persistent over time cognitive and emotional PTSD-like symptoms.