Treatment of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
Chapel Hill
Obsessions persist despite the application of logic or reason, and compulsions are so successful at briefly relieving anxiety that they take on a life of their own. Building around a theory of self-help and self-efficacy, participants will learn strategies to break these repetitious, unproductive patterns in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The components of cognitive-behavior therapy will be outlined: exposure, imagery practice, ritual prevention, and habituation. Participants then learn how to orient patients around four essential homework assignments. Additional skills will include postponing, designing daily worry time and audiotape exposures, modifying obsessions and compulsions, and adding consequences. All strategies can be applied to the treatment of washers and cleaners, checkers, repeaters, hoarders, orderers, cognitive-ritualizers and pure obsessionals.
