Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Read Online Free PDF

recently there is evidence to suggest that compulsions do not differ in content to normal ritualistic behaviour (Fiske and Haslam, 1997; Muris et al. , 1997). These findings suggest that the basic phenomenon involved in OCD is extremely common.
    Salkovskis (1985) hypothesised that the key difference between people with and without OCD is the way in which the intrusive thoughts are interpreted, both in terms of their occurrence and content. In individuals without OCD, intrusive thoughts are generally not interpreted as being meaningful and as a result they are able to dismiss them. However, in individuals with OCD the thoughts are seen as an indication that they might be responsible for harm to themselves or others unless they take action to prevent it.
    Responsibility appraisals are defined as ‘the belief that one has power which is pivotal to bring about or prevent subjectively crucial negative outcomes’.
    Consequently, the individual attempts to suppress and neutralise the thought through compulsions, avoidance of situations related to the thought, seeking reassurance or by attempting to get rid of the thought.
    The aim of these neutralising behaviours is to reduce the perceived responsibility. However, they actually make further intrusive thoughts more meaningful and more likely to occur, evoke more discomfort and lead to further neutralising.
    Rachman (1997, 1998, 2003) extends the cognitive theory to suggest that in OCD, individuals catastrophically misinterpret the significance of their normal intrusive thoughts and this causes obsessions. For an intrusive thought to become an obsession, it must be misinterpreted as important, personally significant, contrary to the individual’s value system and having potential and serious consequences (even if it is perceived to be unlikely).
    Obsessions then persist as neutralisation and avoidance stop the individual finding out that the perceived consequence does not occur. Certain cognitive biases can then increase the significance of obsessional thinking, such as thought–action fusion or inflated responsibility. Thought–action fusion involves the individual regarding the obsessional thought as being morally equivalent to carrying out the action (e.g. having a thought of harming someone is as bad as actually doing it) and/or feeling that having the thought increases the likelihood of it coming true (Rachman and Shafran, 1998).
    Responsibility beliefs may also contribute to catastrophically misinterpret-ing intrusive thoughts and may be a cause or effect of thought–action fusion.
    In 1995, a group of international researchers agreed to collaborate to develop and evaluate measures of cognition in OCD. Known as the Obsessive Compulsive Cognitions Working Group (OCCWG), they reached a consensus about the key cognitions in OCD, identifying six major belief Introduction to obsessive compulsive disorder 15
    domains that they believed were significant in OCD (OCCWG, 1997).
    These were:
    • inflated responsibility – the belief that one has power which is pivotal to bring about or prevent subjectively crucial negative outcomes
    • overimportance of thought – the belief that the presence of an intrusive thought indicates that it is important
    • overestimation of threat – an exaggeration in the estimation of the probability or severity of harm
    • the controllability of thoughts – the belief that it is possible, desirable and necessary to control thoughts
    • intolerance of uncertainty – the belief that it is necessary to be certain and that it will be impossible to cope without complete certainty
    • perfectionism – the belief that there is a perfect solution to every problem, that doing something perfectly is not only possible but also necessary, and that even minor mistakes will have serious consequences.
    Some of these cognitions appear to be specific to OCD, such as inflated responsibility, while others such as perfectionism are relevant to OCD but also occur