treating OCD

• Drug therapy for mental disorders like OCD aims to increase or decrease levels of neurotransmitters in the brain
• evidence suggests low levels of serotonin are associated with OCD and so drugs work to increase the levels of serotonin in the brain
• a type of antidepressant drug called an SSRI (e.g prozac) blocks the reuptake pump in the synapse and reduces the rate of reabsorption. This increases the serotonin levels by allowing more serotonin to attach to the receptor sites
• Treatments typically last 12-16 weeks and are often combined with a psychological treatment such as CBT
• Fineburg et al (2007) compared the effectiveness of the drug Escitalopram to a placebo on 320 patients with OCD. The patients were randomly allocated on a double-blind basis. After 24 weeks, 52% of the placebo group and 23% of the Escitalopram group reported a recurrence to their OCD symptoms
• A strength of drug therapy is that drugs can be manufactured cheaply and are readily available compared to other psychological treatments
• Using drugs to treat OCD is good value for public health systems like the NHS and are therefore cost effective
• drugs like SSRIs are non-disruptive to patient’s lives. They are easy to take and don’t require hours of commitment like psychological talking therapies
• the convenience of drugs increases the chances of the patient complying and taking the medication
• however there are side effects
• Some side effects can be more serious like tremors or weight gain and more than one in a hundred become aggressive and suffer disruption to blood pressure
• Successful therapy is reliant on a patient's willingness to take the drug and so if a patient stops taking the medication, relapse rates may increase. This reduces the effectiveness of drug therapy