Examining depression symptoms within OCD: the role of experiential avoidance.

Background: Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and depression commonly co-occur. Past research has evaluated underlying mechanisms of depression in the context of other diagnoses, but few to no studies have done this within OCD.

Aims: This study examines the relationships between distress tolerance (DT), experiential avoidance (EA), depression, and OCD symptom severity across intensive/residential treatment (IRT) for OCD.

Use of an Individual-Level Approach to Identify Cortical Connectivity Biomarkers in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.

Background: Existing functional connectivity studies of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) support a model of circuit dysfunction. However, these group-level observations have failed to yield neuroimaging biomarkers sufficient to serve as a test for the OCD diagnosis, predict current or future symptoms, or predict treatment response, perhaps because these studies failed to account for the substantial intersubject variability in structural and functional brain organization.

Methods: We used functional regions, localized in each of 41 individual OCD patients, to identify cortical connectivity biomarkers of both global and dimension-specific symptom severity and to detect functional connections that track changes in symptom severity following intensive residential treatment.