Behavioral treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder in a naturalistic setting Original Research Article

This report describes a naturalistic study of an outpatient cognitive-behavioral treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Treatment consisted of exposure and response prevention (ERP). Over the course of 7 years, 39 patients received a diagnosis of OCD and had a baseline Y-BOCS (Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale) score. Of those, 23 received treatment and completed a Y-BOCS following treatment. Y-BOCS scores fell from 24.3 at pretreatment to 7.9 at posttreatment for the 23 patients who received treatment. Results are discussed in the context of randomized clinical trials versus naturalistic applications. In addition, a case summary is presented highlighting some of the treatment issues in delivering ERP in an outpatient clinical setting.