Treatment

• Strength - Drug therapy is effective at tackling OCD symptoms

  • Clear evidence for the effectiveness of SSRI’s in reducing the severity of OCD symptoms, improving quality of life
  • Soomro et al (2009) - compared placebos to SSRI’s and found that there was a significant difference between them, SSRI’s being much more effective
  • Great effectiveness when SSRI’s are paired with psychological treatment
  • Symptoms typically decline in 80% of patients using SSRI’s, other 30% also use councelling which is effective
• Strength - Drugs are cost-effective and non-disruptive

  • Cheaper than psychological treatment, so good value for the NHS
  • Compared to psychological therapies, SSRI’s are much less disruptive to patients loves
• Weakness - Drugs can have side effects

  • A significant minority of SSRI users will get no benefit
  • Some side effects are indigestion, blurred vision and loss of sex drive (usually temporary)
  • Can lead to people stoping medication
• Weakness - unreliable evidence

  • Some psychologists believe the evidence favouring drug treatment is biased because the research is sponsored by drug companies who do not report all evidence (Goldacre 2013)
• Weakness - some cases of OCD follow trauma

  • Treated as biological
  • However, it is acknowledged that it can have a wide range of causes - such as traumatic life events