Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Synopsis

He?s deaf to your protests, stubborn and cruel, And totally blind to your pain. He?ll disguise himself as a habit ? Go On, Do It Again and Again!

This characterisation of OCD (by a sufferer) vividly describes the impact of this destructive, distressing and sometimes disabling mental disorder. In the mid–1980s major studies and surveys of mental health disorder reported that OCD was many times more common than previously believed, and, in the USA, ranked fourth after phobias, substance abuse, and depression. Over the last ten years there has been a surge of interest in, and recognition of, OCD together with a parallel growth of research and knowledge in clinical aspects of cognition and the neuropsychological aspects of OCD.

This important book reviews the nature and incidence of OCD in the light of the related research on cognitive processes and cognitive neuropsychology, and discusses the treatment of OCD with special reference to behavioural and cognitive therapies. Practitioners in clinical psychology, psychiatry and therapy will be able to update their practice in relation to the experimental and clinical research reviewed in this book.

Students and teachers of psychopathology will find in this book a model for how experimental cognitive psychology can build bridges between biological, psychological and phenomenological accounts of mental disorder. This book appears in The Wiley Series in Clinical Psychology Series Editor: J. Mark G.

Williams University of Wales, Bangor, UK