OCD – hope in treatment.
3rd October 2019
By Lily and Jasmine
This month OCD UK are running the campaign #OCDtober! This aims to raise awareness surrounding Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), a common mental health condition by which the individual suffers with obsessive thoughts and intense compulsive behaviours. Although most likely to develop during early adulthood, it can affect anyone of any age or gender. Currently, approximately ¾ of a million individuals are affected by OCD who live in the UK with 50% of these cases falling into the “severe” categorisation and 25% being categorised as “mild”.
Obsessions and compulsions can be very distressing and the behaviours include avoiding people, places or objects as well as reassurance seeking in order to prevent perceived harm or worry.
Often individuals who suffer with OCD are reluctant to seek help or share their concerns or feelings as they are ashamed or embarrassed, especially in cases where their obsessional thoughts centre around perceived taboo subjects such as violence or harm. They may go to great lengths to hide their symptoms or ignore them; in some cases this may be easier than in others as compulsions may be covert in the form of an unobservable mental behaviour or response.
However, if an individual manages to find the courage to speak to someone about what they are experiencing, thankfully, there are a wide variety of treatments available that have great success in helping people with OCD manage their symptoms.
Most psychological treatments aim to break the ‘OCD cycle’ illustrated below:
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) focuses on how our thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes affect how we feel and behave. This can be used in OCD to help identify and challenge the patterns of thought that cause the anxiety. In CBT the person will be asked to explore alternative beliefs about their obsessions and compulsions; for example, if their belief is that their compulsions are keeping them safe and making them feel less anxious, CBT will look at how that the compulsions are actually driving their doubts and fears.
One of the most commonly used sub-branches of CBT for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP). This treatment involves exposing yourself to things that make you anxious and/or trigger an intrusive thought (e.g. the obsessions), whilst preventing your response to this (e.g. the compulsions). Importantly this is done under the guidance of a psychologist and in a safe environment to begin with as it can understandably be quite a distressing exercise. The theory behind this treatment is that when the person doesn’t perform the compulsive behaviours, naturally over time their anxiety will drop anyway – this is called habituation. This will make it less likely that they will experience the same intense anxiety next time they face the feared situation/thought/image.
Mindfulness Training is another technique that is sometimes used in OCD treatment. This attempts to train the individual to be present in their current moment, rather than being caught up in thoughts. Here a therapist might encourage an individual to be non-judgemental when an intrusive thought pops up, let it exist there and not provide it any weight, rather than try to make it go away. Over time this may reduce the sufferer’s anxiety about their thoughts and obsessions.
Some therapists may focus on one technique to treat a person’s OCD, or alternatively they may bring in elements from a variety of techniques and use them in conjunction with each other. Ultimately, everyone is different, and therefore, treatment should be tailored to the individual. A good therapist will usually take the time to understand what works best for that person and produce a treatment plan that reflects this.
The important take home from this blog is that OCD is treatable! It is so important that people experiencing these symptoms don’t suffer in silence. Whilst it can be understandably terrifying to tell people how you are feeling, it is the best first step to getting help that may improve your life dramatically. So please – reach out to someone you trust.
References:
https://www.intrusivethoughts.org/?topic=mindfulness
https://www.ocduk.org/overcoming-ocd/accessing-ocd-treatment/exposure-response-prevention/
https://iocdf.org/about-ocd/ocd-treatment/erp/
http://cogbtherapy.com/obsessive-disorder-treatment
https://bust.com/living/195009-media-ocd.html
https://psychcentral.com/blog/obsessive-compulsive-disorder-in-the-media/
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/obsessive-compulsive-disorder-ocd/