Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

When anxiety disrupts a child’s everyday life, the first thing most parents focus on is finding a good therapist for their child or teen to work with. Once parents secure that coveted afternoon slot with an anxiety specialist, they breathe a huge sigh of relief.
SPACE stands for Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions and is a game-changer for parents navigating the trickiness of childhood anxiety. SPACE is all about empowering you, the parents, to be a rock-solid support system for your child dealing with anxiety.
Fear is one of the six basic human emotions, with a clear evolutionary purpose: to help us respond to danger and survive. In Exposure Therapy, providers create a safe environment to intentionally “expose” their clients to objects, activities, or situations they fear.
Successfully treating obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) often requires primary psychotherapeutic treatment with exposure and response prevention (ERP) and pharmacological treatment with serotonergic agents, typically beginning with SSRIs; however, for a subset of patients with OCD, SSRIs alone do not effectively manage symptoms.
Instead of beating yourself up for feeling anxious about your OCD symptoms, you can rewire your brain to help dial down self-critical thoughts and compassionately comfort the parts of yourself that are struggling.
Youth OCD assessment and treatment is far more nuanced than a downward extension of adult OCD approaches, for good reason. What are some of the fundamental ways cognitive-behavioral approaches for youth OCD differ from their adult counterparts?
Experts Mona Potter, MD and Kathryn Boger, PhD, ABPP recently partnered with ADAA to host an insightful Q&A webinar addressing strategies for parenting children with anxiety and OCD. This blog to addresses the most common themes that emerged from the questions asked during the webinar.
The processes driving worry will vary for every individual.  Chances are good that it will not be one or another, but a proprietary blend of several processes which shape each person’s presentation of worry.  Our job as clinicians is to explore these processes and work with our clients to curate a blend of interventions uniquely suited to their experience.
How do I know if I have self-harm OCD or if I actually want to kill myself? This is a significant differentiation to make because it can have treatment-impacting and even life-threatening consequences.