Understanding fear of guilt key in better treating OCD
Advances
in
our
understanding
of
the
development
and
persistence
of
Obsessive-Compulsive
Disorder
(OCD)
have
the
potential
to
improve
treatment
according
to
a
new
study
by
the
University
of
Waterloo.
The
study
found
that
fear
of
guilt
evokes
feelings
of
doubt
in
decision-making,
with
greater
fear
of
guilt
being
associated
with
greater
self-reported
difficulty
making
decisions,
less
satisfaction
with
the
decisions
made,
and
less
confidence
in
those
decisions. A
person’s
fear
of
being
guilty for something
that
they
have
done
or
haven’t
done
also
results
in
them
wanting
more
information
before
making
a
decision.
“People with OCD have generally been shown in research to have this inflated feeling of responsibility,” said Waterloo graduate student and lead researcher on the study, Brenda Chiang. “They often feel that they are going to be responsible for something bad that will happen or that if they fail to do something, they will be responsible for that harm too. So, they naturally have slightly higher levels of fear of guilt making them more susceptible to indecisiveness.
“This indecisiveness leads to difficulty terminating an action as well as evokes doubt as to whether an action was done properly, which leads to repetition of that action.”
The study assessed 63 undergraduate students from the University of Waterloo, who were previously identified as having a wide range of trait levels of fear of guilt; from low to high.
“The next step would be to examine this in people who have OCD,” said Professor Christine Purdon, co-author of the study. “The current gold standard for treating OCD is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which has about a 50 to 60 per cent success rate if you include people who drop out because they can’t tolerate it or people who decline the treatment because they anticipate that they can’t do it.
“We’re only getting about half of the people with OCD treated properly, so once we have a better understanding of factors that cause repetition and doubt, we can develop treatment that addresses a greater number of persons.”
The study was recently published in the Journal of Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders.