AO3 Biological OCD treatments

• Effectiveness of OCD treatments

  There is research to support the effectiveness of drugs in treating OCD

  • Soomro conducted a meta-analysis on 17 studies using SSRIs to treat OCD.
  • They found SSRIs were more effective in reducing OCD symptoms in the short-term compared to a placebo drug
  • This suggests drugs are effective in treating OCD in the short-term
• Limit of the effectiveness of drugs in treating OCD


  However, research on the effectiveness of the use of drugs to treat OCD only focuses on short-term impacts

  • There is little data that looks at long-term impacts/relapse rates after using drug treatments
  • This suggests that although drugs may be effective in the short term, they are majorly limited in the long-term treatment of OCD
• AO3 , Drug treatments are preferred 


  A strength:

  • They require little effort from the user, compared to therapies (such as CBT) which require the patient to attend regular therapy sessions and think 🤔 deeply about their problems
  • Furthermore, drug treatments have economical benefits as they are cheaper for the health service 🐕‍🦺, they require little monitoring and are much quicker than psychological treatments.

  This is a particular strength of drug therapies to treat OCD; they are preferred by many, due to their quick benefits
• AO3 Side effects 


  All antidepressants have side effects but some are more severe than others.

  • When taking SSRIs, nausea, headaches and insomnia are common side effects
  • With BZs, side effects often include aggressiveness and LTM impairment
  • The side effects of tricyclic antidepressants include hallucinations an and irregular heartbeat 💓 these side-effects are extreme and very dangerous!
  • This limits the use of drug therapies as they often have damaging side-effects to treat OCD.
  • Furthermore, there is a risk of patients becoming addicted to the drugs, further limiting their use