BACKGROUND Obsessive-compulsive disorder is a common anxiety disorder found in 1 to 2 percent of the population. Obsessions are recurrent and persistent thoughts that cause marked anxiety or distress. Compulsions are repetitive behaviors or mental acts done to prevent or reduce anxiety. Patients might underreport symptoms or complain of coexisting depression or anxiety instead. The primary care...

BACKGROUND While the cognitive theory of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is one of the most widely accepted accounts of the maintenance of the disorder in adults, no study to date has systematically evaluated the theory across children, adolescence and adults with OCD. METHOD This paper investigated developmental differences in the cognitive processing of threat in a sample of children, a...

LAURA E. FABRICANT: A Comparison of Two Brief Interventions for Obsessional Thoughts: Exposure and Acceptance (Under the direction Of Jonathan Abramowitz) While exposure and response prevention (ERP) is currently the most effective psychological treatment for unwanted, intrusive thoughts associated with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), the procedures involved in ERP are challenging and may ...

Suppression is one of various mental control techniques that people may use to manage unwanted thoughts. Evidence suggests that it is at best unsustainable and at worst counterproductive. This leads to the question: If suppression is a futile way to respond to unwanted, intrusive thoughts, what is a more effective alternative? In the current study, we evaluated the relative effectiveness of sup...

Cognitive-behavioral theories suggest that the development of neutralizing is crucial in the development and persistence of obsessional problems (OCD). Twenty-nine patients with a Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed., American Psychiatric Association, 1994) diagnosis of OCD were randomly allocated to 2 conditions. Both listened to repeated recorded presentations of the...

Three constructs considered to be important primary beliefs in the pathogenesis of OCD are inflated responsibility, intolerance of uncertainty and thought-action fusion. While there is evidence suggesting that these beliefs/appraisals can influence OCD symptoms, we conducted two experiments to determine whether manipulating aversive intrusive thoughts would conversely affect measures of these c...

To explore the role of the thought enhancement and thought rebound effects in obsessionality, the relationship between obsessional symptomology and responding during and after the attempted suppression of unpleasant personal intrusive thoughts was examined. Ss first completed the Maudsley Obsessive Compulsive Inventory (MOCI) [Rachman and Hodgson, 1980]. Later, Ss indicated their most frequent ...

Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 48(6) gambling debts, lying, criminal activity in order to obtain money and the avoidance of paying debts. Additionally, the patient complained of decreased mood with suicidal thoughts, increased psychomotor drive and sleep disturbances. A thorough psychiatric assessment of the patient revealed that during puberty the patient had become hyperactiv...

Cognitive theories of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) posit that maladaptive beliefs lead to the development of symptoms. However, psychometric studies have provided mixed evidence regarding whether beliefs about control over thoughts predict OCD symptoms above and beyond other obsessive beliefs. Clinical reports have documented concerns among those diagnosed with OCD regarding a potential ...