Psychological treatments of OCD-Exposure, response prevention (ERP)

Psychological treatments of OCD-Exposure, response prevention (ERP)

1. Aims to provide opportunities for re-conditioning.

   • classical conditioning
   • operant conditioning

2. Exposure

   • Patient is repeatedly presented with the feared stimulus until anxiety subsides (habituation)
   • May be in a similar manner to systematic desensitisation
   • If pace is too slow, the patient may lose motivation
   • Anxieties persist because of negative reinforcement. To break the anxiety-producing stimulus, reinforcing must occur and the patient must learnt through relaxation to reduce anxiety.

3. Response prevention

   • Patient is prohibited from engaging in the usual compulsive response
     • This allows the patient to recognise that anxiety can be reduced without the compulsive ritual.
   • For example, a woman that is obsessed with cleanliness might be given a list of therapeutic rules she must accept, such as not cleaning her house for a week
   • If a patient can control their behaviour, then they learn that those obsessions that previously created anxiety no longer produce this response.