USU study works to curtail obsessive compulsive tendencies
Professor Michael Twohig, as a licensed psychologist, was a principle investigator for a recent obsessive compulsive disorder study conducted at USU. Previously, he completed three other treatment studies involving adolescents’ religious and moral-based experiences with OCD.
He has recently received a grant to treat adults with OCD.
He said he hopes this research will lead to better outcomes with the treatment of OCD and anxiety disorders.
“We are tweaking the best existing treatment for OCD using some things we’ve figured out,” Twohig said, “trying to make it more acceptable and more interesting to take a part in.”
Twohig and a group of graduate students are working collaboratively with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He said their aim is to involve 30 to 40 participants here and match that number in North Carolina. Twohig is working with Professor Johnathan Abramowitz from UNC, who is the director of the OCD/Anxiety Disorders Clinic.
Abramowitz is also an internationally recognized expert in the nature and treatment of OCD and other anxiety disorders, and has published more than 150 articles and reviews about such problems. His clinical research focuses on causes, assessment and treatment of OCD.
Twohig said he’s currently looking for subjects to participate in the study on campus. Anyone — student or otherwise — ages 18 or older can participate in free OCD counseling at the Human Serivces Resource Center. There is no commitment required from anyone who takes part in the study; participants can drop out at any time.
Sometimes assessing necessary treatments can become difficult.
“An easy way to tell if you’re struggling with OCD is that you do something a lot,” Twohig said, “— more than other people do.”
Abramowitz said OCD generally has two kinds of symptoms: obsessions and compulsions. Obsessions are unwanted thoughts or disturbing images, which provoke anxiety. Compulsions are the reactions people have to get rid of anxiety caused by those thoughts. Examples of this are saying prayers excessively, locking doors several times or washing hands hundreds of times a day.
Abramowitz said a good way to gauge the line between quirky and obsessive is when these symptoms last more than an hour each day. This can cause a person to feel overly-distressed, at which point these behaviors interfere with that person’s daily life.
No single cause for OCD has been pinpointed but several theories have been formed. Some people are more likely to lead into OCD than others, Twohig said. Generally it develops slowly — a constant struggle that keeps growing until it is too much.
“You need to have cold air and you need to have moisture,” Abramowitz said, regarding the balance between nurture and nature, and its link to mitigating OCD.
There is no known “cure,” Abramowitz said. But there are ways to cope with these forms of anxiety. He said his success rate has varied from about 60 to 70 percent, by teaching people with OCD to experience these unwanted thoughts like people without OCD.
He said learning to do that is often a difficult task, because one main symptom of OCD is constantly obsessing over thoughts. To simply say “don’t think about it,” may only increase the onset of these thoughts even further, he added.
“If I said don’t think about a pink elephant, what is the first thing that pops into your mind?” Abramowitz asked.
Angelina Noel, a wife and mother, has been clinically diagnosed with OCD. She recently visited a psychiatrist she found through a church therapy program. She said germs and lack of organization have caused her anxiety since high school. Her therapist diagnosed her with post traumatic stress disorder, which she believes to be the cause of her OCD onset.
She said she remembers having certain abnormal behaviors as a child and constantly fought with her mom about her socks, because she didn’t feel they were tight enough. As an adult, she said she cannot concentrate or function unless her entire right side — socks, shoes, cuffs and even bra straps — is tighter than her left side.
She found minor improvements in her day to day life after making regular visits to a psychiatrist. She said for the most part her symptoms remain, because she won’t participate in some of the treatments suggested, but she did find that the therapies she tried improved her situation to a slight degree. She said she would suggest counseling to anyone struggling with OCD.
Twohig said OCD is something that cannot be overcome without professional assistance. The treatments offered by the psychology department are just one way to find help. The study lasts 12 weeks, during which all treatments are completely free of charge.
“Even regular people should go to counseling,” Abramowitz said. “Everybody needs someone to listen.”
– audrey.moulton@aggiemail.usu.edu