OCD Intensive Details: Therapy Format

The Skills for Life Programme is based upon 4 key working areas: education, cognitive skills, behavioural skills and anxiety management. By the time you find us you are often quite distressed and we work quickly in the initial stages to stablise the situation before working on longer term management skills. Secondly we work with you to put in place key cognitive skills. The behaviour section we have developed is quite different from examples you may have seen or read about in the media. It is, however, highly effective and our unique approach is hands-on and based upon your goals, not ours. Finally, anxiety management skills enable you to consistently implement what you have learnt on a daily basis and provide a key component in relapse prevention. We are unique in the way we understand and apply our Programme and more critically, we are driven by our own experience of OCD. Skills for Life will impact not only upon your OCD, your environment but your life in general and your relationships with those close to you.

Why the intensive format? Why not treatment over a longer period at less frequent intervals?

We have been treating people with OCD for 6 years as a Centre. We began seeing higher success rates in our clients who completed our intensive course when we first introduced it in 2003. The evidence we have observed from treating thousands of people with OCD is that the intensive format works more effectively than traditional weekly treatment. It's a simple as that!! So we weren't surprised when a recent study at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine using PET scans of patients who completed 4 weeks of intensive therapy demonstrated ''remarkable and rapid benefits of intensive daily cognitive-behavioral therapy [CBT] for OCD, even for patients who had not responded well to standard treatment previously," furthermore, the lead author, Dr Sanjaya Saxena, in an interview with Medscape Psychiatry, added, "Intensive CBT should be the treatment of choice for patients whose OCD has been refractory to standard treatments." ⁽¹⁾

Why the group format? Why not one-on-one treatment with a therapist?

Another outcome we have noticed is that the small group format is more effective as opposed to treatment one on one. We suspect that this is due to the powerful and unquantifiable benefits of having support and empathy from others who are going through the same experience as you. In short, they mentor you and you mentor them so you learn how to give and receive constructive support. We make sure our courses comprise small groups of around 6 people in order to gain maximum results. We select each group and adapt the treatment according to your OCD sub-type, e.g. contamination, responsibility, etc. and sometimes according to age. If you have reservations about working in a group, we can organise an intensive course just for you with the option to have the course in your own environment.