Obsessive-compulsive Disorder Group Cognitive - Behavioral Therapy

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is characterized by recurrent and unwanted thoughts, impulses, or images (obsessions) and repetitive behaviors or mental acts (compulsions) that the person feels driven to perform in response to obsessions (American Psychiatric Association, 1994). Once considered a rare and largely untreatable condition, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is now known to be the fourth most common psychiatric disorder, which causes a great deal of impairment to the life of the clients in academic, occupational, and social functioning. Previous research at home and abroad has demonstrated that individualized cognitive-behavioral therapy is an effective treatment for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, but there is little research on the group cognitive-behavioral therapy (GCBT) for OCD, which is considered to be cost-effective. In this research, we apply group cognitive-behavioral therapy containing exposure and ritual prevention (EX/RP) to the treatment of OCD to modify the distorted beliefs and expose the clients to the anxiety-provoking situation without any ritualization or compulsion, so as to remove the symptoms of OCD. In the research, 12 clients are randomly assigned to the experimental group or wait-list group, each group containing 6 clients. The clients in the experimental group receive 8 sessions of cognitive-behavioral therapy,while the clients in the wait-list group receive no psychotherapy. The scales of SCL-90 and Y-BOCS are used to measure the changes of the clients after therapy.Results1. According to the scales of SCL-90 and Y-BOCS, almost all the clients in the experimental group benefit from group cognitive-behavior therapy, they make great improvements on the symptoms of OCD. While the clients in the wait-list group made no improvement at all. The scores of SCL-90 and Y-BOCS of the clients after therapy in the experimental group are significantly different from those before therapy. Furthermore, the improvement is maintained at 2-month follow-up, which indicates the significant effect of the group cognitive-behavioral therapy.2. The scores of Y-BOCS of three clients in the experimental group fall down to 15, with only slight symptoms of OCD, while the other three decline to 25, indicating mild severe symptoms. According to the declining rate (declining rate > 20%) ,it proved to be effective on treating OCD using group cognitive-behavioral therapy. Two of them improve greatly and arrive at the efficacious degree(20%≤declining rate< 35%) . The other four reach the standard of the most efficacious degree (declining rate≥35%).