CT therapy for OCD

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  • CT therapy for OCD
    • cognitive therapies focus on changing thoughts
    • CT aims to identify, challenge and modify dyfunctional beliefs
    • compulsions
      • the CT thearpist also questions patients about the value of their compulsive behaviour
      • when this belief is challenged and confronted as false it can help control the behaviour
    • obsessions
      • the therapist questions how patients interpret their beliefs including why they think the obessesion developed
      • such beliefs can then be challenged and re-interpreted so that it is no longer an anxiety producing activity
    • thought records
      • used to help patients consider their dyfunctional beliefs about obsessions and compulsions
      • patients are required to keep a daily record of their intrusive thoughts this might include details of where and when they had the thought and what the thought meant to them what they felt and what thye did in reponce
      • the thearpist can then discuss the though record with the patient and challenge unrealistic belfies so that the patient will come to recognise the irational nature of their beliefs and responces
    • effectiveness
      • rarely used on its own
      • wilhelm et al found a significantly improved in 15 patients who used CT alone over 14 weeks as measured on Y-BOCS
      • Jones and Menzies found 20% improvement in symptoms from group CT over eight sessions
    • appropriateness
      • not suitable for all
        • involve cosiderable patient effort
        • Ellis believes that sometimes people who claimed to be following the princibles of CT were not putting their revised beliefs into action and therefore the thearpy was not effective
      • theoretical basis
        • the therapy has recieved research attention showing for example that people who hold irrational beliefs form inferences that are signifcantly less functional than thoose formed who hold rational beliefs.
          • on the other hand it may be that irrational beliefs are counter productive but realistic
        • Alloy and Abrahmson found that depressed people gave more accurate estimates of the likelyhood of a disaster than normal controls

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