OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE DISORDER A GUIDE FOR PATIENTS AND THEIR FAMILIES

Table of Contents

1. OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE DISORDER A GUIDE FOR PATIENTS AND THEIR FAMILIES
2. WHAT IS OCD?
   1. Examples of OCD
   2. What happens In OCD?
   3. How does someone develop OCD
   4. Why do the problems continue and get worse?
   5. Making sense of OCD
3. THE TREATMENT OF OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVE DISORDER
   1. Treatment
   2. Assessing the problems
   3. What happens In treatment
   4. Some Important points about treatment
   5. How can you get the best out of treatment?
4. ADVICE FOR FAMILY AND FRIENDS
   1. Advice
   2. How can you maintain improvement?

What happens In treatment

After your therapist has gathered enough information (usually after 2 to 3 sessions), an individual treatment plan will be made. The prospects for sufferers from OCD had improved dramatically in the last 15 to 20 years. Before then, OCD often went on for many years, or even a lifetime.

With modem treatment, research shows that 70-80% of sufferers will greatly improve within months and will remain well. However we should say that the chances of success depend greatly on you. Modern treatment is very active and depends for its success on your efforts. Your therapist will offer you support and advice but in the end what you put into it is most important.

For most people with OCD, the treatment of choice is what we call 'exposure with response prevention'. As we said before, treatment has to be individually planned, so we can't give you an exact idea of what will happen or how long it will take. However, we can give a broad description.basically,'exposure and response prevention' means that you need to expose yourself to feared objects or situations, whilst preventing the usual neu~alising (rituals, avoidance and so on. In this way you can get used to the things that worry you and learn that nothing terrible actually happens. The details of how quickly you expose yourself to worrying situations and which neutralising behaviour is banned will be worked out with your therapist. This probably sounds like hard work, and indeed it can be. However, most people find that with the right kind of help and support, they can carry out such a programme and overcome their problems.For some people who have few or no rituals, where the main problem is the worrying thoughts, different trea~ents may be needed. These treatments involve learning either to control the thoughts directly, or to become less distressed by them so that they become easier to dismiss.