Narrative Therapy for Treatment-Resistant Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre

Status

Completed

Conditions

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Treatments

Other: Psychotherapy

Study type

Interventional

Funder types

Other

Identifiers

NCT04154085

4136016

Details and patient eligibility

About

This is a prospective exploratory study using narrative therapy in group format, over 20 sessions, 2 hours per session, weekly, to determine whether this modality can provide any benefit to OCD symptoms, mood, sense of social connectedness, sense of identity, and/or quality of life in individuals living with treatment-resistant OCD. NOTE: an amendment is now in place so that the group can occur virtually given the COVID pandemic; Zoom will be used as our platform.

Full description

Many patients referred to the Thompson Centre at Sunnybrook have severe OCD, and have significant and disabling symptoms even after completing our treatment protocols, including our intensive and residential programs. These patients have already undergone traditional cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and exposure and response prevention (ERP), as well as pharmacotherapy. Patients voice distress at their poor quality of life and high symptom burden, and can feel hopeless, if they have exhausted numerous evidence-based treatment options without significant improvement. Narrative therapy is a unique approach, based on the premise that language reflects a social construction of reality. Individuals with severe mental illness hold within themselves life narratives that reinforce their painful beliefs about themselves, the world, and others. Evidence indicates that narrative therapy can help to create a more cohesive identity and a more flexible view of the self and the future.

Our primary goal is to determine whether narrative therapy could improve OCD symptom burden and quality of life in a highly treatment-resistant population. Domains such as mood, identity, and interpersonal connectedness are secondary measures. The research questions are: could narrative therapy lead to symptomatic improvement in treatment-resistant OCD? And could narrative therapy improve the domains of mood, interpersonal connectedness, and/or identity in patients with treatment-resistant OCD?

Enrollment

14 patients

Sex

All

Ages

18 to 65 years old

Volunteers

No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

Able to speak and write fluently in English.
Patients who have participated in the intensive/residential program or group programs and/or have received pharmacotherapy with a psychiatrist at the Frederick W. Thomspon Anxiety Disorder Centre
Patients between the ages of 18-65
Only patients who have treatment-resistant OCD are eligible. For the purposes of this study we are defining this as: failure to achieve remission after having tried 1) At least two first-line SSRI's AND either clomipramine or atypical antipsychotic augmentation, and 2) at least one full course of exposure and response prevention (ERP), or our intensive/residential program.

Exclusion criteria