Neuroscience
Just a few supportive phone calls from a clinician can make all the difference to people following a home-based, computerised form of behavioural therapy for obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).
The therapy, known as ‘behavioural therapy (BT) Steps’, involves clients using a manual to help them understand what triggers their compulsions, and how to gradually resist performing the rituals (e.g. hand washing) they normally carry out when exposed to those triggers. Clients use a touch-tone phone to report their progress and receive encouragement via recorded voice messages. Such systems allow people who don’t have face-to-face access to a clinician to engage in therapy. However, what’s not clear is how important it is for such clients to receive scheduled telephone calls from a clinician providing help and advice, as opposed to clients being given a free-phone number that they can choose to call whenever they need guidance.
To find out, Mark Kenwright and colleagues at the Institute of Psychiatry recruited 44 sufferers of OCD to take part in a 17 week BTSteps programme. Half the clients were given a free-phone number to contact lead research Mark Kenwright, a clinician, for guidance; the other half received nine scheduled calls from him over the 17 week period.
Clients who received the scheduled calls were less likely to drop out, were more likely to complete homework that involved resisting performing obsessive rituals, and showed greater improvement in their OCD symptoms. Overall, the clients given scheduled calls received an average of 76 minutes of clinician support over the phone, compared with the clients given a free-phone number who received an average of only 16 minutes clinician support (only 8 clients actually used the support number).
“To further ease OCD sufferer’s access to computer-aided self-help at home, the BTSteps system, including its user’s manual, will henceforth be made accessible on the internet under the name of OCFighter...” the researchers said.
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Kenwright, M., Marks, I., Graham, C., Franses, A. & Mataix-Cols, D. (2005). Brief scheduled phone support from a clinician to enhance computer-aided self-help for obsessive-compulsive disorder: randomised controlled trial. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 61, 1499-1508
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
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Neuroscience
Don't ring us, we'll ring you
Just a few supportive phone calls from a clinician can make all the difference to people following a home-based, computerised form of behavioural therapy for obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).
The therapy, known as ‘behavioural therapy (BT) Steps’, involves clients using a manual to help them understand what triggers their compulsions, and how to gradually resist performing the rituals (e.g. hand washing) they normally carry out when exposed to those triggers. Clients use a touch-tone phone to report their progress and receive encouragement via recorded voice messages. Such systems allow people who don’t have face-to-face access to a clinician to engage in therapy. However, what’s not clear is how important it is for such clients to receive scheduled telephone calls from a clinician providing help and advice, as opposed to clients being given a free-phone number that they can choose to call whenever they need guidance.
To find out, Mark Kenwright and colleagues at the Institute of Psychiatry recruited 44 sufferers of OCD to take part in a 17 week BTSteps programme. Half the clients were given a free-phone number to contact lead research Mark Kenwright, a clinician, for guidance; the other half received nine scheduled calls from him over the 17 week period.
Clients who received the scheduled calls were less likely to drop out, were more likely to complete homework that involved resisting performing obsessive rituals, and showed greater improvement in their OCD symptoms. Overall, the clients given scheduled calls received an average of 76 minutes of clinician support over the phone, compared with the clients given a free-phone number who received an average of only 16 minutes clinician support (only 8 clients actually used the support number).
“To further ease OCD sufferer’s access to computer-aided self-help at home, the BTSteps system, including its user’s manual, will henceforth be made accessible on the internet under the name of OCFighter...” the researchers said.
___________________________________
Kenwright, M., Marks, I., Graham, C., Franses, A. & Mataix-Cols, D. (2005). Brief scheduled phone support from a clinician to enhance computer-aided self-help for obsessive-compulsive disorder: randomised controlled trial. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 61, 1499-1508
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
- Turning Talking Therapies Into Doing Therapies
There's plenty of research evidence for the effectiveness of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), but for some reason it doesn't always seem to work so well in real-life settings. In what many psychologists will surely find a readable and helpful...
- When Clients In Therapy Show Sudden, Dramatic Improvements
There's growing evidence that people who undergo psychological therapy often demonstrate sudden, dramatic improvements, almost as though they've had a revelatory change of outlook and thinking style. What's more, these sudden changes appear...
- Introducing The Super Shrink
From 'the archives', first published in the Digest 19/1/2004 When it comes to client recovery, it's not the type of therapy that matters so much as the individual therapist who's giving it - that's the message from a study by researchers...
- Successful Therapists Focus On Their Clients' Strengths
Research is increasingly showing that the success of therapy depends not on the theoretical orientation of the therapist, but on key therapeutic processes that cross theoretical boundaries. Two such processes are ‘problem activation’ – helping...
- Cognitive Therapy On The Couch
Cognitive therapy for depression could be improved by the therapist focusing more on the therapeutic process itself. That’s according to Jonathan Kanter (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) and colleagues who compared the effectiveness of therapy given...