Cognitive Therapy for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: A Guide for Professionals by Sabine Wilhelm, Gail S. Steketee

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Synopsis

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is known to affect some 2.3 percent of Americans-about 3.5 million individuals. Research indicates that behavior therapy is among the strongest techniques for managing the disorder. Unfortunately, the exposure techniques used in behavior therapy for OCD are considered too frightening for many sufferers. Although they desperately need help, as many as 25 percent of individuals with OCD refuse behavior therapy out of fear.

This book offers a new treatment approach to OCD that avoids exposure techniques. Based on research funded by the National Institutes for Health, it presents for the first time a purely cognitive approach to treating OCD. Not only will these techniques open up psychotherapy to those OCD sufferers who resist exposure-based therapy, but it also shows great promise for those who struggle concurrently with depression, anxiety, and other symptoms.

Two noted psychologists offer therapists the first purely cognitive treatment method for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), which has been proven effective for people with pure obsessions, harming, religious, and sexual obsessions, as well as checking and mental rituals.

Biography

Sabine Wilhelm, Ph.D., is assistant professor of psychology at the Harvard Medical School and director of the Body Dysmorphic Disorder Clinic and clinical director of the Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Clinic, both at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, MA.

Gail S. Steketee, Ph.D., is professor in and co-chair of the Department of Clinical Practice at the School of Social Work at Boston University. She is master lecturer on cognitive techniques for treating obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) at the New Jersey Association of Cognitive Behavioral Therapists. She lives in Boston, MA.