ABSTRACT
Obsessional compulsive disorder (OCD) is an anxiety disorder in which the person experiences recurrent obsessions and/or compulsions that are time consuming and/or cause significant distress or impairment. Obsessions are persistent intrusive and/or inappropriate thoughts, impulses or images. Interestingly, findings indicate that the co-existence of OCD does not have significant impact on the psychotic symptomatology. There are two types of thought suppression experiment: those that demonstrate the effect of thought suppression on thought frequency and those that examine the effect of thought suppression on negative appraisals. Both are appropriate to use with people with psychosis. Clients with psychosis who have beliefs such as 'failure to control worry can lead to psychotic relapse', are only likely to be able to use the Controlled worry experiment following weakening of the belief by verbal reattribution. The main treatment approach is called ‘exposure with response prevention'. This basically works by experiencing the feared trigger without engaging in the usual 'neutralising' behaviour until the anxiety passes.
