A study of doubt in obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Background And Objectives: Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) has been referred to as the "doubting disease," yet there has been little foundational research on its phenomenology and characteristics. Studies of doubt have relied on researchers' idiosyncratic conceptualizations of the construct, resulting in varied assessment methods and different prevalence rates (11-75%). We examined the nature and characteristics of doubt in people with clinical and subclinical OCD so as to identify its nature and characteristics, and factors that may be unique to OCD.

Context matters: criticism and accommodation by close others associated with treatment attitudes in those with anxiety.

Background: Many people with anxiety do not seek therapy due to negative views of treatment. Although close others (e.g.

Criticism and accommodation are associated with treatment concerns in close others to those with anxiety.

Objectives: Those close to people with mental health difficulties (e.g., family members, romantic partners and close friends) are often involved in their care decisions.

Dr. Jack Rachman's contributions to our understanding and treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Background And Objectives: This paper reviews the development of the cognitive-behavioural model of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) through the work of Dr. Jack Rachman and the research his ideas inspired or shaped.

Methods: A narrative review of Rachman's work and important developments in related areas was conducted.

How do close others to those with anxiety feel about treatment? Development and validation of the Treatment Concerns Questionnaire-Close Others.

Background: The close others (e.g., family members, romantic partners) of people with anxiety and related disorders are typically involved in their treatment decisions.

Anxiety disorders, COVID-19 fear, and vaccine hesitancy.

Development of the COVID-19 vaccines unfolded in real-time, lending a sense that they were developed more rapidly than other vaccines. Long-term data on their safety and effectiveness is not yet available. Thus, people may have greater uncertainty about the COVID-19 vaccines than other vaccines.

Avoidance of mild threat observed in generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) using eye tracking.

Attentional biases towards threat are assumed to be a causal factor in the development of anxiety disorders, including generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). However, findings have been inconsistent, and studies often examine single time-point bias during threat exposure, instead of across time. Attention to threat may shift throughout exposure (e.

Fear of compassion is associated with treatment ambivalence and negative expectations for treatment in people with anxiety.

Objectives: Fears of compassion are hypothesized to be associated with treatment attitudes, but this relationship has not yet been explored.

Methods: Measures of fear of compassion and treatment expectations and ambivalence were administered to those with above-average anxiety (N = 302) and those who met criteria for an anxiety or related disorder (N = 40).

Results: In those with anxiety disorders, fear of receiving compassion and fear of self-compassion were strongly correlated with treatment ambivalence.

How are OCD Patients and Family Members Dealing with the Waxing and Waning Pattern of the COVID-19 Pandemic? Results of a Longitudinal Observational Study.

The current study aimed to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the mental health of people with OCD and the degree of family accommodation (FA) by live-in family members across phases of the lockdown measures imposed by the Belgian government. Forty-nine OCD patients and 26 live-in family members participated in the study. We assessed OCD symptom severity and FA of the live-in family members, as well as depressive symptoms, anxiety and stress levels and COVID-19 related psychological distress of patients and family members at four different timepoints: one month after the start of the lockdown (T), during the gradual relaxation (T), between the two waves (T) and during the second wave (T).

How are OCD patients and their families coping with the COVID-19 pandemic? A qualitative study.

Patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) are likely to be affected by the COVID-19 crisis since fear of contamination is highly prevalent in this illness and disease reminders are omnipresent during this crisis. The current study aimed to investigate the impact of the pandemic and the lockdown on the mental health, well-being and coping abilities of OCD patients and their families in order to increase our understanding of the underlying mechanisms of the disorder. Twenty-two patients and 13 family members were interviewed one-to-one about their experiences and challenges caused by the pandemic and home-confinement directives.

Scared of compassion: Fear of compassion in anxiety, mood, and non-clinical groups.

Objectives: Fear of receiving compassion from others, expressing compassion to others, and being compassionate towards oneself have been identified as potentially important factors in the persistence of depression, stress disorders, and eating disorders. There is good reason to expect that these fears may play a role in anxiety and related difficulties, but there is little available information on the extent to which they are present and associated with symptom severity.

Methods: This study compared the severity of the three fears of compassion (receiving, expressing to others, and showing to oneself) in those with a principal diagnosis of depression (n = 34), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD; n = 27), social anxiety disorder (SAD; n = 91), generalized anxiety disorder (GAD, n = 43), and a control sample with no mental health difficulties (n = 212).

A transdiagnostic perspective of constructs underlying obsessive-compulsive and related disorders: An international Delphi consensus study.

Background: The Research Domain Criteria seeks to bridge knowledge from neuroscience with clinical practice by promoting research into valid neurocognitive phenotypes and dimensions, irrespective of symptoms and diagnoses as currently conceptualized. While the Research Domain Criteria offers a vision of future research and practice, its 39 functional constructs need refinement to better target new phenotyping efforts. This study aimed to determine which Research Domain Criteria constructs are most relevant to understanding obsessive-compulsive and related disorders, based on a consensus between experts in the field of obsessive-compulsive and related disorders.

A study of the Repeated Actions Diary in patients suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder.

The structured Repeated Action Diary (RAD) collects in vivo data on compulsions and their various characteristics. Certain compulsions (i.e.

If it is absurd, then why do you do it? The richer the obsessional experience, the more compelling the compulsion.

Mounting evidence suggests that obsessive intrusions are often accompanied and amplified by perceptual experiences of different modalities (e.g., feeling dirt on one's skin while experiencing intrusive thoughts about contamination).

Mindfulness and mind wandering: The protective effects of brief meditation in anxious individuals.

Mind wandering can be costly, especially when we are engaged in attentionally demanding tasks. Preliminary studies suggest that mindfulness can be a promising antidote for mind wandering, albeit the evidence is mixed. To better understand the exact impact of mindfulness on mind wandering, we had a sample of highly anxious undergraduate students complete a sustained-attention task during which off-task thoughts including mind wandering were assessed.

Stove checking behaviour in people with OCD vs. anxious controls.

Background And Objectives: A growing body of research suggests that the repetition of an action degrades memory for that action, as well as confidence that is has been done correctly. This has important implications for understanding the compulsive repetition of actions characteristic of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). At this time, though, much of the research has been conducted on analogue or nonclinical OCD samples in comparison to healthy controls and often using virtual, as opposed to actual, threat stimuli.

The longitudinal association of relationship satisfaction and sexual satisfaction in long-term relationships.

Several prominent models of relationship satisfaction and sexual satisfaction imply directional relationships between these constructs (e.g., attachment theory, social exchange models of relationship satisfaction, the interpersonal exchange model of sexual satisfaction).

Intrusive thoughts: linking spontaneous mind wandering and OCD symptomatology.

One recent line of research in the literature on mind wandering has been concerned with examining rates of mind wandering in special populations, such as those characterized by attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, dysphoria, and schizophrenia. To best conceptualize mind wandering in studies examining special populations, it has recently been suggested that researchers distinguish between deliberate and spontaneous subtypes of this experience. Extending this line of research on mind wandering in special populations, in a large non-clinical sample (N = 2636), we examined how rates of deliberate and spontaneous mind wandering vary with symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

Responsibility and hand washing behaviour.

Background And Objectives: Recent research suggests that compulsions persist due to a self-perpetuating mechanism of poor memory confidence and repetition. However, most of this work has examined checking compulsions and findings may not generalize well to washing compulsions. This study examined the role of responsibility in the persistence of washing behaviour.

A Model for Recruiting Clinical Research Participants With Anxiety Disorders in the Absence of Service Provision: Visions, Challenges, and Norms Within a Canadian Context.

High-quality research in clinical psychology often depends on recruiting adequate samples of clinical participants with formally diagnosed difficulties. This challenge is readily met within the context of a large treatment center, but many clinical researchers work in academic settings that do not feature a medical school, hospital connections, or an in-house clinic. This article describes the model we developed at the University of Waterloo Centre for Mental Health Research for identifying and recruiting large samples of people from local communities with diagnosable mental health problems who are willing to participate in research but for whom treatment services are not offered.

Susceptibility to cognitive distortions: the role of eating pathology.

Background: Thought-Shape Fusion (TSF) and Thought-Action Fusion (TAF) are cognitive distortions that are associated with eating and obsessional pathology respectively. Both involve the underlying belief that mere thoughts and mental images can lead to negative outcomes. TSF involves the belief that food-related thoughts lead to weight gain, body dissatisfaction, and perceptions of moral wrong-doing.

Motivation, intentionality, and mind wandering: Implications for assessments of task-unrelated thought.

Researchers of mind wandering frequently assume that (a) participants are motivated to do well on the tasks they are given, and (b) task-unrelated thoughts (TUTs) that occur during task performance reflect unintentional, unwanted thoughts that occur despite participants' best intentions to maintain task-focus. Given the relatively boring and tedious nature of most mind-wandering tasks, however, there is the possibility that some participants have little motivation to do well on such tasks, and that this lack of motivation might in turn result in increases specifically in intentional TUTs. In the present study, we explored these possibilities, finding that individuals reporting lower motivation to perform well on a sustained-attention task reported more intentional relative to unintentional TUTs compared with individuals reporting higher motivation.

A diary study of the phenomenology and persistence of compulsions.

Background And Objectives: Research on the persistence of compulsions has found that, when making the decision to stop a compulsion, people with OCD weigh sensory and memory information as more important than external criteria. At the same time, research has also found that repetition of behaviour has a deleterious effect on memory, sensory and cognitive confidence. These findings have important treatment implications but they are almost exclusively laboratory based.

Distinguishing the roles of trait and state anxiety on the nature of anxiety-related attentional biases to threat using a free viewing eye movement paradigm.

Although attentional biases to threatening information are thought to contribute to the development and persistence of anxiety disorders, it is not clear whether an attentional bias to threat (ABT) is driven by trait anxiety, state anxiety or an interaction between the two. ABT may also be influenced by "top down" processes of motivation to attend or avoid threat. In the current study, participants high, mid and low in trait anxiety viewed high threat-neutral, mild threat-neutral and positive-neutral image pairs for 5 seconds in both calm and anxious mood states while their eye movements were recorded.

Treatment fears in anxiety disorders: development and validation of the treatment ambivalence questionnaire.

Objectives: There are a number of effective psychological interventions for anxiety disorders. Anecdotal and empirical evidence indicates that clients are often highly apprehensive about commencing therapy. However, to date, there have been no empirical studies of the content of individuals' fears about beginning a psychological treatment for anxiety problems.