ABSTRACT
This book summarizes the knowledge and clinical competencies required by clinicians treating Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), with description and illustration of specialized CBT approaches developed for specific subtype characteristics and for complex presentations. Further research is required to examine and refine these interventions, and to develop new approaches using multidimensional and stringent outcome criteria, with examination of mediators of sustained change. The goal of specialized treatment for OCD, as for other disorders, is recovery. The book examines response rates and mediators of long-term improvement randomized controlled outcome trials should optimize treatment characteristics, and should report and characterize those patients who recover, those who achieve clinically meaningful improvement, and those who do not achieve such benefits. It is important to define treatment resistance to specialized Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) as an interaction of intervention factors and patient characteristics in the context of evidence-based optimally delivered interventions, and to differentiate between frequently occurring "technical treatment failures" and serious treatment failures.
