OCD: Heterogeneous Psychiatric Disorder Analysis

OCD is a perplexing and heterogeneous neuropsychiatric disorder that is characterized by obsessions and compulsions of varying manifestations (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Moreover, OCD is also a highly chronic and disabling disorder, in that it has been found to have a very low rate of spontaneous remission (Abramowitz & Siqueland, 2013) and is associated with significant functional impairment and decreased quality of life (Subramaniam et al., 2014). Not only are there personal costs associated with OCD, but there are also many social costs as well (DuPont, Rice, Shiraki, & Rowland, 1995). Because of the personal impairment, decreased quality of life, and social costs, treatment is often necessary to ameliorate symptoms in individuals with OCD. Fortunately, various efficient treatments, including psychotherapeutic and pharmacological, have been formulated based on various etiological models to treat OCD. In recent times, OCD has mainly been treated with exposure and response prevention (ERP) and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT; i.e., ERP with cognitive techniques, or CT with behavioral techniques), as well as cognitive therapy (CT), pharmacotherapy (e.g., …show more content…
Eddy et al. (2004), similar to Ponniah et al.’s (2013) and Abramowitz et al.’s (2002) findings, also found that behaviorally oriented treatments (e.g., ERP and ERP-focused CBT) tended to be more efficacious than other cognitive oriented treatments. In line with Bandura’s (1977) postulation, it seems that cognitive change can be strongly made through behavioral