None listed
Conditions
Brief summary
Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a debilitating anxiety disorder. Given the strong demand for psychotherapeutic services, effective and reliable treatment for OCD is not always readily available. The aims of this research are to (1) develop an online self-help metacognitive therapy (MCT) programme for OCD, and (2) implement and evaluate the self-help MCT programme in an online controlled trial. A minimum of forty participants with symptoms of OCD will be recruited through the World Wide Web via snowballing throughout Australia. Participants will be randomly allocated to either control group or intervention group. Access to either the self-help MCT programme (intervention) or the progressive muscle relaxation training programme (control) through the website (the OCD-Doctor-Online) will then be granted. Participants will be required to complete each module of the programme before carrying onto the next. Participants will be administered several instruments measuring symptoms of OCD, depression, anxiety and stress, quality of life, and metacognitions at pre-test, post-test and at 6-week follow-up. If statistically significant reductions in OCD symptoms are found in this study it will justify the completion of further effectiveness and efficacy research and will potentially provide an important alternative treatment option for people diagnosed with OCD.
Interventions
If participants are randomly allocated to the intervention group, treatment will be based on the manual Individual and Group Metacognitive Therapy for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (Rees & van Koesveld, 2009). This manual will be reviewed and modified in study 1 (development of the programme and website) in order to be used as an online self-help programme. The programme will be provided through the website 'the OCD-Doctor-Online'. A time period of six weeks will be allocated to all participants
If participants are randomly allocated to the intervention group, treatment will be based on the manual Individual and Group Metacognitive Therapy for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (Rees & van Koesveld, 2009). This manual will be reviewed and modified in study 1 (development of the programme and website) in order to be used as an online self-help programme. The programme will be provided through the website 'the OCD-Doctor-Online'. A time period of six weeks will be allocated to all participants to complete the program (a total of 10 modules). At the end of each module, a number of questions will be asked to ensure that participants completely understand the content of that module. It is anticipated that each module will take approximately 1 hour to complete. In order to ensure that participants complete modules in the correct order, modules will not be available until questions from the previous modules have been completed.
Sponsors
Associate Professor Clare Rees, Principal Investigator of the study
Study design
Allocation
Randomised controlled trial
Intervention model
Parallel
Primary purpose
Treatment
Masking
Open (masking not used)
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
All
Age
18 Years to No maximum
Healthy volunteers
No
Inclusion criteria
- Have a total score on the OCI-R of 21 or greater, as defined by Foa and colleagues (2002) as the optimal cut-off to distinguish OCD clients from non-anxious clients. - Be aged 18 years or over. - If participants are taking medication such as antidepressants or other mood stabilisers, they must be stable on this medication one month prior to their baseline assessment. - Participants must be willing to remain on the same dosage of the same medication throughout the entire treatment period including follow-up. - Be currently living in Australia.
Exclusion criteria
- They show moderate to high suicidal risk as measured by the suicidality section of the MINI (Sheehan et al., 1997). - They meet the diagnosis for psychosis and/or schizophrenia, according to the DSMIV-TR diagnostic criteria, as measured by the PDSQ (Zimmerman & Mattia, 2001a, 2001b). - They are currently undergoing other psychological treatment.
Outcome results
None listed