How can OCD be treated?

  Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a group of neurological disorders with obsessive-compulsive symptoms as the main clinical manifestation.  Obsessive-compulsive symptoms generally include: 1) obsessive-compulsive thoughts, such as doubts, memories, and exhaustive thoughts; 2) compulsive behaviors, such as repeatedly doing unnecessary behaviors, repeatedly checking, repeatedly washing hands, repeatedly counting, and ritualistic actions, and so on. Patients suffer from a high level of pain and a strong desire for treatment, but often suffer from the lack of good treatment methods and have to suffer unspeakable pain for years and years.  However, OCD is not untreatable. Since psychotherapy became more and more widely understood in the 20th century, there are more and more ways to treat OCD. From psychoanalytic therapy to humanistic therapy to cognitive behavioral therapy, treatments are becoming more and more effective. Since the beginning of the new century, the integrated psychotherapy approach, which is in line with evidence-based medicine, has given wings to the treatment of OCD.  Integrative treatment for OCD In general, all the symptoms of OCD are only external manifestations of the problem, a suit of armor that the patient puts on himself to avoid more difficult situations. It is not to be broken easily, and it is very difficult to break easily.  The only two conditions under which the patient will take off his or her armor are when the dilemma is eliminated without the need for self-protection, and when the patient has truly resolved his or her fear of the dilemma. These two conditions sometimes happen naturally and the patient heals himself. And when patients cannot heal themselves they need professional psychological help.  Integrative psychotherapy approaches, for the most part, establish the therapeutic relationship with humanistic psychotherapy, cognitive behavioral therapy as the therapeutic framework, and psychoanalysis as the core theory for understanding the deeper causes of the patient’s problems.  First, the psychiatrist will work with the patient to discover the distress and benefits his problems bring to him through listening and influencing techniques. The patient is given clarity about the impact of the symptoms on real life and the greatest benefit of the symptoms for the patient – “I am sick so I can’t deal with everything else”. Of course, this is a process, and almost all patients are unable to admit at first that the symptoms are good for them. Then, the patient accepts the existence of the symptom and lives, works, and studies with it, as Morita therapy says, “Let it be, and do what it is. This process is often painful, and some patients may even experience an increase in symptoms. However, after the darkness comes the dawn. When the patient realizes that the symptoms are just symptoms, he or she is on the road to healing. The psychologist will work with the patient to discover how his symptoms, thoughts, behaviors, and emotions correlate with related life events in his life, and to find ways to interrupt the negative cycle. The psychiatrist then leads the patient through the appropriate interruptions and successfully reduces, or even eliminates, the symptoms.  Finally, through psychoanalysis, the psychiatrist will go into the deepest part of the patient’s heart with the patient to discover those long-forgotten shadows, observe, acknowledge, accept, and eventually integrate them into the energy of his or her own life.