Current Research
Current research projects conducted in the clinic are investigating the nature, origin and treatment of OCD.
The nature and treatment of obsessive compulsive disorder
Research includes:
Examining the effectiveness of a new cognitive therapy called Danger Ideation Reduction Therapy (DIRT) for people with OCD developed by Dr Mairwen Jones and Associate Professor Ross Menzies.
|
|
Danger Ideation Therapy for Obsessive-Compulsive Checkers: A Randomised Controlled Trial |
|---|---|
|
USyd HREC: 12-2006/9675 NHMRC Grant No: 57003 |
|
|
|
|
|
Dr Mairwen Jones and Dr Ross Menzies from The Faculty of Health Sciences, The University of Sydney have recently been awarded a three-year National Health and Medical Research Council grant to test the effectiveness of non-pharmacological approaches for Obsessive- Compulsive Disorder (OCD). The study will be conducted at The Anxiety Disorders Clinic at The University of Sydney and involves a 14-week treatment program for people with OCD. All treatment will be provided by registered psychologists and will be free of charge for participants who are willing to take part in this research. If you would like to find out more about this treatment trial and are over the age of 18 years please contact Lisa Vaccaro at the Anxiety Clinic on (02) 9036 7307 or email: |
|
|
This project is supported by an NHMRC project grant and has been approved by University of Sydney Human Research and Ethics Committee |
Further information: Participant Information Sheet explaining the study in further detail.
Memory capacity and attentional bias in OCD.
The study will examine material-specific attention and memory effects, and will extend the examination of memory performance in OCD to prospective memory. The study will compare participant’s beliefs about their own memory (metamemory) to objective performance measures before and after treatment.
Origin study: How do such threat expectancies (erroneous beliefs of danger) arise in OCD?
From a danger expectancy perspective, anxiety-disordered individuals have fear networks, characterised by the presence of flawed estimates of threat, which in turn provoke anxiety. Whilst we now know about the nature of these cognitions and their role in driving OC behaviour, little is known about their development or origins.
Deliberate Self Harm in OCD
Deliberate Self-Harm (DSH) behaviours, may be conceptualised along a continuum of compulsivity and impulsivity. compulsive DSH behaviours include hair-pulling and skin-picking as habitual and repetitive whereas impulsive DSH behaviours are episodic and often triggered by external stressful events. We will be examing the comorbidity of impulse control disorders (e.g. DSH) in a sample of clinical OCD patients.
Ordinary risk-taking behaviour in OCD
Individuals with OCD will avoid situations and presume a negative outcome when they do not have sure evidence of a positive outcome, they are “risk-aversive”. Understanding the process of risk-appraisal in OCD may clarify cognitive distortions in individuals suffering OCD and thus is important for the development of cognitive interventions for the disorder.