Personal Perspective: There's an OCD care crisis in America. Are we listening to the OCD sufferers who need the most help?
Reports recommend promoting exposure and response prevention as a first-line treatment.disorder symptoms always flared up at the holidays. Family visits made him feel like unless he had every inch of his house organized, something terrible would happen.
He couldn’t say what—it was just a feeling. His OCD specialist instructed him to follow the gold-standard protocol of exposure and response prevention : “Don’t engage any of the deeper questions, that’s just a waste of energy and a trap. Learn to embrace the uncertainty of not-knowing, and then you will live your values."There must be some good reason why his OCD kept returning so fiercely at this most wonderful time of year. He just needed help to safely experience why.Mark had grown up with a highly critical mother who only showed love when her home was immaculate and pristine. Not surprisingly, she couldn’t carry her own"messy feelings," and when they metaphorically dropped all over the place, Mark was expected to catch them, name them, and console her, like a doting puppy dog. As if the feelings never existed in the first place, he must lap them up. Mark had an inkling that his OCD was not just an enemy but a protector and communicator, but so many other OCD specialists were trainedNobody can tell the full story of what I’m trying to respond to—how to hold on to myself and this vital relationship I need too. No one can name this irreconcilable conflict. It’s for cases like Mark’s and the many out there that I’m especially disappointed with the latest White Paper from the International OCD Foundation :Less than 1 percent of those with OCD sampled received a formal diagnosis. Between 81 and 98 percent of individuals with OCD were not receiving effective, evidence-based treatment.Between one-quarter and one-half of people with OCD turn down requests to do ERP, citing difficulties stomaching it . We need to consider them as much as the slim percentage of individuals who actually resonate with ERP treatment as a stand-alone treatment. These OCD sufferers feel terribly alone, hopeless, and left out, without any options for help and little consolation in knowing that the only treatment out there doesn't serve them. ERP only targets OCD symptoms and, worst of all, it convinces sufferers not to talk about the full experience and emotional context of their OCD itself. It fosters a disavowal of the self, rather than a full claiming of self.as the only treatment and final word on such a uniquely vexing disorder.In his new year ahead, let’s all—clinicians, researchers, and laypeople—explore OCD with a bit more humility and. There’s more to the story, and we need each other to piece together the puzzle, but we can only do that if we keep the field open for more advances as a community.Ong, C. W., Clyde, J. W., Bluett, E. J., Levin, M. E., & Twohig, M. P. . Dropout rates in exposure with response prevention for obsessive-compulsive disorder: What do the data really say?, is a clinical psychologist, TEDx speaker, and author who specializes in using his background in music, literature, and the arts to showcase the transformative power of psychotherapy.Self Tests are all about you. Are you outgoing or introverted? Are you a narcissist? Does perfectionism hold you back? Find out the answers to these questions and more with Psychology Today.
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