Treatment for OCD

It takes the average person 14 to 17 years to get properly diagnosed with OCD. Treating OCD requires specific and nuanced care, as it is a complex diagnosis. That’s why we have specialist. Think about it like this- if you were diagnosed with cancer, you would begin seeing an oncologist who would prescribe you the right medicine to treat the cancer. OCD is similar.

Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) is a form of CBT and is the gold standard for treating OCD, along with Acceptance and CommitmentTherapy (ACT), SPACE (Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions), and Inference-based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.

  • The core principle of ERP therapy is to expose individuals to the thoughts, images, objects, or situations that make them anxious or fearful (the “exposure” part), and then prevent them from engaging in their usual compulsive responses or avoidance behaviors (the “response prevention” part).

  • The goal of ERP therapy is to reduce anxiety through two different process.

    • inhibitory learning. Inhibitory learning shifts the focus from merely “getting rid of fear” to building new, adaptive ways of responding to fear.

    • Habituation occurs when someone becomes accustomed to a stimulus, and as a result, their reaction to it diminishes.

  • ERP can feel intimidating because it goes against the natural instinct to avoid what makes us anxious and to face our fears.

    It is done in a controlled manner with a trained therapist to support and guide you through the process and teach you new ways of responding to the anxiety.

  • ACT offers a compassionate and flexible approach to treating OCD by focusing on acceptance of thoughts and feelings, cognitive defusion, mindfulness, and value-driven action. By shifting the focus from controlling thoughts to living a meaningful life, ACT helps individuals with OCD reduce the power of their symptoms and improve their overall well-being.

  • Inference-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (I-CBT) is a specialized approach for treating OCD that focuses on addressing inferential confusion and obsessive doubt. It helps individuals distinguish between reality and imagination, reducing the power of obsessions and compulsions. By challenging the faulty reasoning that underlies OCD, I-CBT enables individuals to trust their perceptions and resist compulsive behaviors, leading to a reduction in anxiety and an improvement in daily functioning.

    This is not typically used as a front-line therapy, or stand alone approach to OCD, but works as an adjunct to ERP or for people that have had unsuccessful results from ERP.

What is SPACE?

SPACE is a parent-based treatment program for children and adolescents with anxiety, OCD, and related problems. Additionally, it provides support for families that are struggling with adults who would be considered “Failure to Launch” and children who experience ARFID (Avoidant Restricted Food Intake Disorder.

SPACE works well for families with young children or with children/adolescents who are resistant to therapy. It can also be used as an adjunct to your child’s individual therapy as it will help you learn the skills to set them up for success.

  • SPACE was developed by Dr. Eli Lebowitz at the Yale Child Study Center and has been tested and found to be as efficacious in treating childhood OCD and anxiety disorders.

  • SPACE aims to treat children, and adolescents, and young adults, through modifying parental behavior. Although children do not have to attend SPACE sessions - they are the patients.

    • Separation anxiety

    • Social anxiety

    • Generalized anxiety

    • Fears and phobias

    • Panic disorder and Agoraphobia

    • Selective mutism

    • Obsessive-compulsive disorder

    • ARFID

    • "Failure to Launch"

  • Parents who participate in SPACE will learn skills and tools to help their child overcome anxiety, OCD or related problems.

    The treatment focuses on changes that parents can make to their own behavior, they do not need to make their child change. 

    The two main changes that parents learn to make in SPACE treatment are to respond more supportively to their anxious child and to reduce the accommodations they have been making to the child symptoms.