OCD Flashcards
(24 cards)
What is a compulsion?
A repetitive and rigid behaviour or mental act that a person feels driven to perform in order to prevent or reduce anxiety.
What is OCD?
A disorder in which a person has recurrent and unwanted thoughts, a need to perform repetitive and rigid actions or both.
What are the main symptoms of OCD?
- recurrent obsessions and compulsions.
- recognition by the individual that the obsessions and compulsions are excessive and / or unreasonable.
- distressed or impaired and daily life is disrupted by the obsessions and compulsions.
Name the 4 characteristics that cognitive psychologists believe people with ocd have.
- Likely to suffer depression
- Very high moral standards and standards of conduct.
- They believe their thoughts are harmful to other people.
- Believe they should be able to have control over their thoughts and behaviours.
What are neutralising behaviours?
A persons attempt to eliminate unwanted thoughts by thinking or behaving in ways that out matters right internally, making up for unacceptable thoughts.
What are the 4 steps of catastrophic misinterpretations.
Presence of obsessional thoughts or images. E.g. Image of harming others.
Catastrophic misinterpretation of the thought - ‘I am a bad person and may murder someone’
Fear and high level of anxiety
Attempts to resist and avoid the thoughts.
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What is hypervigilance?
Being extra aware of things. E.g. Checking cutlery before eating with it.
Explain case study of woman with fear of diseases and blood.
When she went out she was looking for blood the whole time. She misinterpreted small dark things as blood spots. E.g. A red sweet wrapper. Her hypervigilance caused her to be able to recall in great detail the blood-related items that she encountered over many years.
Evaluation of cognitive explanation of OCD.
✅ it does explain how an obsessive-compulsive is maintained. ❌doesn’t explain why the person has obsessional thoughts and images in the first place.
✅ the combination of the 4 step model and the 4 characteristics of someone with OCD explains maintenance of OCD.
❌ lack of empirical evidence to support the theory, as it’s difficult to test as it all occurs in the mind which is difficult to test scientifically.
❌ it treats everyone as the same, because it ignores the role of individual differences in OCD as it sees all behaviour as resulting from internal factors.
❌ ignores the role of biological and environmental factors in OCD and focuses too much on internal processes.
What is an obsession?
A persistent thought, idea, impulse or image that is experienced repeatedly, feels intrusive and causes anxiety.
Explain the two steps involved in cognitive treatments
- Helping people to understand they are misinterpreting their thoughts such as thinking that their thoughts will become real and feeling guilty and ashamed about them.
- Making people aware that they need to neutralise their obsessive thoughts, by attempting to make amends for having such thoughts.
What are the 4 steps of cognitive therapy?
- Relabel - recognise that the thoughts and urges are a result of OCD.
- Reattribute - realise that the intensity and intrusiveness are cause by OCD, it’s probably related to a biochemical imbalance in the brain.
- Refocus - work around the OCD thoughts by focusing your attention on something else, at ,East for a few minutes. Do another behaviour.
- Revalue - do not take the OCD thought at face value. It’s not significant in itself.
What happens in habituation training?
The client has to think repeatedly about their obsessive thoughts. This is because by thinking about obsessions, they will become less anxiety-raising. This will consequence in the obsession not requiring high levels of anxiety.
Describe the Rufer study.
Followed 30 inpatients with severe OCD for 6-8 years. Patients were on various medications and therapies over the years. Rufer interviewed patients and doctors about symptoms and improvements.
Found that cognitive therapy was the most successful in reducing obsessive thoughts especially combined with behavioural therapy.
Cognitive therapy was found to reduce the frequency and duration of obsessional thoughts.
Evaluation of cognitive therapies.
✅ there is a lot of empirical evidence to support the use of cognitive therapy, especially when it’s combined with behavioural therapy.
✅ cognitive strategies can be practiced at any time outside of the therapeutic situation. This helps a person maintain their ability to cope.
✅ cognitive therapy has been found through follow up studies to be maintained several years after therapy has been stopped.
✅ research has shown that cognitive therapy is very useful in decreasing the number of obsessive thoughts that OCD sufferers have and the duration of the compulsive behaviour.
❌ the patient must be articulate and prepared to be challenged by the therapist in therapy therefore it’s not suited to all people.
Describe the McKeon and Murray study.
They compared the number of people who had OCD in families that had a relative that suffered from OCD.
They found that a person with a relative affected by OCD was twice as likely to have the disorder than people in a control group without affected relatives.
This shows that there could be a genetic reason why people suffer from OCD.
What are the 2 types of anti-depressant drugs?
SSRI - Prozac
MAOI - Nardil
What is serotonin hypothesis?
The brain deactivates the neurotransmitter substance once it has passed on the message to the next neuron either producing a chemical called monoamine oxidase or the neurotransmitter is reabsorbed by the firing neuron once passed to the next neuron (called reuptake). Depression can be caused by either uptake being too good (not enough neurotransmitter being passed on to the next neuron) or too much monoamine oxidase being produced.
What does the orbital frontal cortex have to do with OCD?
PET scans have shown that people with OCD have unusually high levels of activity on a part of the left frontal cortex (the orbital frontal cortex). High levels of glucose metabolism and blood flow have been found here. This area of the brain is responsible for converting info from the senses into thoughts.
How is OCD treated with drugs?
Treated with drugs which increase the level of serotonin in the brain.
Which drugs not only increase the level of serotonin but also make the orbital frontal cortex operate at a normal level?
Clomipramine, fluxetine and fluvoxamine.
What is a last resort for treating OCD?
Neurosurgery
Describe the Riddle study. (Biological treatment)
Participants aged 8-17 were randomly assigned to either fluvoxamine or placebo for 10 weeks.
For children taking fluvoxamine, there was a 42% reduction of OCD symptoms as measured by the scale after 10 weeks but the reduction happened early in those 10 weeks, compared with 26% reduction with those taking placebo.
Fluvoxamine has a rapid onset of action and is well tolerated and effective for the short term treatment of paediatric OCD.
Evaluation of treatment for OCD
✅ easily tolerated and safe even for older and younger people.
✅ they are not addictive and can be used long term. It’s also quicker to give than psychotherapies such as cognitive therapy.
✅ the combination of drug therapy and cognitive therapy has been found to work the best and last the longest where a person can have the symptoms reduced and ways to cope with obsessions together.
❌ can cause side effects including nausea, headaches and relapse when medication is stopped where worse symptoms can be found.
❌ they take 4-12 weeks before any therapeutic benefits can be found so people often abandon using them as they think that they are not working or forget to take them due to lack of motivation because it’s not a quick fix.
