Exposure and Response Prevention
Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) is also a type of CBT and is considered to be the gold-standard treatment for OCD. ERP helps individuals manage intrusive, anxiety-inducing thoughts (obsessions) by gradually exposing them to these thoughts and preventing the mental or physical responses (compulsions) that follow. This teaches individuals to resist performing the compulsive behaviors or mental rituals (like washing, checking, or counting) they typically use to reduce anxiety. By preventing these responses, you learn that the anxiety will decrease on its own without the need for compulsions. ERP is often combined with medication (like SSRIs) prescribed by a psychiatrist.
You might benefit from ERP if you…
Feel like you need 100% certainty before you can move on
Replay things in your head to make sure you didn’t do something wrong
Frequently seek reassurance from others or Google things to feel better
Spend significant amounts of time performing rituals, mentally or physically, to reduce anxiety
Feel driven to repeat certain actions until they feel “just right”
Have fears around contamination, illness, harm, mistakes, or losing control
What does the research say about virtual therapy and treatment outcomes?
There have been many studies exploring the effectiveness of virtual therapy on symptom reduction, most of which have found virtual therapy to be as effective as in-person. A large meta-analytic study (a study that combined the results of many different smaller studies to get a clearer and more reliable result) compared clinical interventions delivered via videoconferencing with those delivered in-person. Overall, they found that in-person and virtual interventions produced similar outcomes. Another study exploring the effectiveness of virtual therapy for OCD found that virtual therapy treatment was effective in reducing OCD symptoms and it also improved patients’ quality of life. This is not surprising as virtual therapy allows the therapist to help the client engage in exposure work in their home and/or in the real world - which is typically where obsessions and compulsions present themselves. Given the effectiveness, virtual therapy is here to stay!
