Introduction
Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is comprised of two segments, which are compulsions and obsessions. Compulsions are monotonous activities that a person tends to repeat to reduce the overall level of anxiety that may be generated through the interface of obsessions. The latter represent unwanted thoughts and doubts that affect a person’s mind and severely increase the mental discomfort experienced by patients (Clark, 2019; Keeley et al., 2008).
The problem with OCD is that the majority of patients believe that they are only influenced by this disorder when they want everything to be neat and tidy. In reality, the essence of OCD lies in the inability to control the negativity they let inside their mind (Björgvinsson et al., 2007; Clark, 2019). There is a pattern where patients with OCD are eventually moved by the idea that harm will be caused if they irregularly do something mundane. For most people, OCD is a manageable mental health issue, but there are also severe cases that may require therapy to help individuals overcome the severe stress linked to health, relationships, work, and everyday life. The current paper discusses the three most efficient therapies utilized by care providers in the case of OCD and outlines the essential challenges and benefits associated with each.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
The main objective of cognitive-behavioral therapies (CBT) is to maintain a person’s wellbeing and disrupt the damaging trends in their cognitive functioning. When a neutral event stimulus affects a person to an extent where they start eliciting fear and anxiety, the fundamental symptoms of OCD appear (Jacobson et al., 2016). This is why CBTs are often utilized to relieve psychological distress and physical pain in patients experiencing mental health issues.
Therefore, there is a strict need for avoidance behaviors that will reduce anxiety and aid the person in coming back to the initial, calmer state. The application of CBT requires care providers to confront exceptional escapism in patients and help them reduce anxiety without resorting to avoidance behaviors (Björgvinsson et al., 2007). Accordingly, the majority of compulsions are met with fear acquisition techniques to disrupt damaging rituals and come up with solutions that do not spark any anxiety in the given patient. As a treatment method, CBT is a rather consistent tool that can be utilized by care providers to ensure that patients become more resilient over time.
Experiments involving the deployment of CBT tactics showed that the majority of obsessions and compulsions could be replaced with positive thoughts. Nevertheless, it may only occur in the case where the patient accurately bypasses the key sources of distress and alters their view of essential stressors (Keeley et al., 2008; Merlo et al., 2010). The functional relationship between the key elements of OCD is successfully disrupted by CBT because the latter provides an opportunity to cope with flawed cognitions and focus on positivity instead.
Knowing that patients with OCD may be exposed to the belief that they are in danger when they are in relative safety, it can be stated that CBT should be an instrument facilitating the process of interacting with the world and all of the objects that can be found nearby (Clark, 2019). Negative thinking is not battled but rather replaced with positive cognitions when CBT is utilized, which is especially beneficial in cases when the patient tends to exaggerate the severity of conditions they experience due to OCD. With CBT, there is a rather high chance that the client will be able to transform their lifestyle and engage in completely different behaviors.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) is one of the most popular strategies for coping with OCD due to the fact that it averts people from living a mundane life full of compulsions and obsessive thoughts. As soon as the person realizes what matters to them the most, they get the opportunity to capitalize on their strengths and quit struggling with the need to give in to community pressure or similar influences (Bluett et al., 2014).
In a sense, the ACT is a compass that relieves physical and emotional pain and aids the patients in recognizing that the whole concept of life is too complex to be perceived as a mere mix of losses and disappointments. The prevalence of negative experiences can be addressed with ACT in the case where patients are too carried away by their expectations and believe that imaginary dangers are going to become real in the future (Jacobson et al., 2016). From the therapeutic point of view, ACT promotes healthy risk-taking and assists patients in eluding the most intrusive thoughts. According to Reuman et al. (2018), the application of ACT presupposes that a person will be able to realize that none of the lifetime events is fundamentally challenging.
As a consistent therapeutic approach, ACT may be picked by care providers because of its quick fixes related to pain and discomfort relief. Despite some of these effects being majorly short-term, the implications of a person becoming more acknowledging and aware are largely positive (Bluett et al., 2014). The destructive approach that many patients with OCD resort to is to pay too much attention to inherent emotions and thoughts.
Quite a few people may be arguing with questionable feelings instead of letting them go, which ultimately creates an obsession-compulsion relationship. Accordingly, the person becomes responsible for thinking about their problems as something irreplaceable and required for their healthy functioning (Keeley et al., 2008). ACT transforms these irregular beliefs into positive thinking while bypassing any triggering situations and thought-stopping techniques. The increasing amount of hesitation that is generated by OCD has to be addressed with ACT because it provides patients with an opportunity to fixate on the present instead of thinking about the past, contemplating life choices, and filling their life with negativity.
Exposure and Response Prevention
Exposure response prevention (ERP) therapy is another beneficial means of addressing OCD because it provides patients with an opportunity to leave their neutralization behaviors behind and stay away from compulsions. This is achieved with the help of mild confrontations that are required to help the patient reduce the inherent level of anxiety and then increase the strength of confrontational moods to overcome the anxiety that the person has been able to tolerate previously (Björgvinsson et al., 2007; Twohig et al., 2018).
Even though it may be harder for patients to adhere to ERP methods from the beginning, the long-term effects of this therapy are enormous because it curbs anxiety from the first session and maintains the same level of impact throughout the intervention. The deeper one gets into exposure to OCD; the stronger should be the applications of ERP (Clark, 2019). Due to its relatively straightforward application, ERP is considered the most commonly applied therapy for patients with OCD.
Even though CBT is also a strong therapy to address OCD, therapists often resort to ERP as a starter package for coping with mental disorders that relate to obsessions and compulsive behaviors. Despite the presence of numerous differences, ERP can be seen as just as effective as the other two therapies reviewed above because of its stronger influence on rituals (Björgvinsson et al., 2007). While the therapy does not directly address a patient’s beliefs, the therapist still gets a chance to expose them to a feared situation to attain a mental health state where higher grades of anxiety can be tolerated.
Since rituals represent a cognitive phenomenon, the key benefit of ERP is the increased sense of responsibility that patients may feel when beginning to acknowledge the destructive impact of compulsions and obsessions (Jacobson et al., 2016; Keeley et al., 2008). Even though the perception of risk may remain relatively flawed, OCD will be confronted through the interface of continuous positive thinking and exposure to the deepest fears that interfere with normal daily functioning.
Conclusion
OCD is a devastating mental health disorder that may turn into a series of rather damaging events for any given person. The growing influence of anxiety is one of the potential impacts that have to be considered when looking at available therapy choices and the effectiveness of each of the proposed methods. OCD is a cross-cultural disorder that may have a significant impact on people across the globe irrespective of their gender, sexuality, or religious creed.
Even though there is no clear etiology established for OCD, there are multiple factors that have to be considered when picking the right therapy for an individual: from genetics and cognitive responses to behavioral trends and neuro-biological peculiarities. The majority of therapies intended to help cope with OCD are based on learning principles and recognize the need to neutralize obsessions via compulsions. Therefore, the grade of anxiety serves as one of the key catalysts for the right choice of therapy and a sample for cognitive models intended to mitigate the negative impact of OCD.
The three types of OCD therapy reviewed within the framework of the current paper are equally beneficial when coping with the disorder. Each of them allows for a therapeutic alliance with the patient and thorough identification of treatment goals that have to be met to reduce anxiety and remove dangerous compulsions. After checking the symptoms and picking the most appropriate therapy, care providers should be ready to evaluate the chances of having to deploy pharmacotherapy in addition to CBT, ACT, or ERP.
An essential factor that makes OCD less of a threat for the majority of individuals is the availability of such treatment methods that are evidence-based and clinically validated. Behavioral interventions move the traditional cognitive approaches to the side, as quite a few challenges can be resolved with the help of the three therapies presented in this paper. The existence of meta-cognitive principles of treatment makes it safe to say that CBT, ACT, and ERP show promise and should be developed further to aid care providers in coping with the most complex cases of OCD.
References
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