New Approaches to the Treatment of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders

Obsessive-compulsive disorders have recently become treatable by newer psychological techniques. Compulsive rituals have responded to modeling with exposure in vivo coupled with response prevention (flooding). This procedure is significantly superior to relaxation. The method involves the therapist bringing the patient into prolonged contact with the stimuli which trigger his compulsive rituals and asking the patient to refrain from carrying out rituals thereafter. The therapist first demonstrates such contact before the patient undertakes it. Treatment may take but a few hours or many months. Full co-operation is essential by the patient and often the family also. Treatment frequently needs to be carried out at home as well as in hospital. Obsessive thoughts have been successfully treated by a variety of uncontrolled methods. In thought stopping, the patient is asked to induce his obsessive thought and then stop it by shouting “stop” first aloud and then subvocally. In flooding in fantasy (implosion) the patient is asked to imagine scenes concerning her obsessive thoughts for an hour or more while the therapist describes them at length. Active therapeutic ingredients of techniques still require to be worked out in more detail.