Intensive Group Treatment of Obsessive-compulsive Disorder: a Pilot Study

Objective: Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a disabling anxiety disorder. The established treatment of choice is exposure and response prevention (ERP) and it has been demonstrated that ERP is effective across a range of different treatment formats. The aim of the present pilot study was to evaluate the effectiveness and patients’ acceptability of individually delivered ERP in a group setting. In the current paper we describe the main features of this novel approach as compared to standard individual ERP and other group approaches. Method: Six consecutively referred OCD patients (aged 23-59) were included, five with OCD since childhood or early teens. The treatment was run four successive days, with prolonged exposure training on Day two and Day three, designed as one long session. This procedure was partly modeled over the one-session approach to treatment of specific phobias. Results: All patients expressed high acceptance of the treatment procedures, content and format. Mean Y-BOCS score at pre-treatment was 23.5 points, at post-treatment 5.7 points and at six months follow-up 6.3 points. Conclusions: Intensive group ERP appears to be a promising treatment format and future larger scale studies are