How to Treat OCD

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is on the list of mental disorders with no cure. If a person has OCD, obsessive qualities take control of one's mind that can lead to repeated actions or even spoken phrases. Fortunately, we live in an age where things have advanced enough where special treatments can help keep the most severe symptoms under control. But a person with OCD needs to keep treatment going for as long as they live with the help of medication, psychotherapy and some alternative psychiatric treatments.

Things You'll Need

• Antidepressant
• Tranquilizer (optional)
• Off-label OCD medication (optional)
• Cognitive behavioral therapy
• Psychiatric hospital (optional)
• Electroconvulsive therapy (optional)
• Deep brain stimulation (optional)
• St. John's Wort (optional)

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Instructions

Medications

• 1

  Ask your doctor about getting a prescription for an antidepressant to see if it helps alleviate some of your OCD symptoms. According to Mayo Clinic, OCD symptoms are rooted in a lack of serotonin, which can be helped with an antidepressant. However, some with OCD have deeper psychiatric issues at play that need further treatment. Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft are some of the most common antidepressants.

• 2

  Talk to your doctor about taking prescriptions that aren't approved by the FDA but known to help OCD conditions. This procedure is known as going "off label", though can be risky with side effects. It's nevertheless legal and your doctor can do it for you if you want to experiment.

• 3

  Work with your doctor on taking a combination of antidepressant with an antipsychotic drug or tranquilizer. These combinations are known to work well for the most severe OCD patient. Take your medications regularly, however, since stopping all of a sudden can cause severe withdrawal symptoms.

• 4

  Report to your doctor any major side effects you may have from the antidepressant or tranquilizer. Some of the worst side effects can be caused by dangerous interactions with other medications or when ingested with certain foods. Your doctor will work with you on determining what you should or shouldn't take to alleviate these side effects.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

• 5

  Set up an appointment with a Cognitive Behavioral Therapy specialist who can help you slowly do away with your obsessive thoughts by retraining how you think and interact with the world. Find a licensed cognitive behavioral therapist in your state.

• 6

  Work closely with your cognitive behavioral therapist on how the therapy will work. Take directions on how to work with exposure and response prevention. Here, your therapist will deliberately and slowly expose you to things you fear so you gradually lose your fear of them. These things may be germ-covered items that the OCD patient was afraid to touch.

• 7

  Keep working with your therapist and using the cognitive behavioral therapy over a period of at least 20 sessions to give ample time to losing your OCD obsessive behavior. Many therapists in this psychotherapy field work not only with individuals but also with couples, as well as children and people over 65.

Alternative Treatments

• 8

  Discuss with your psychotherapist the option of doing other psychiatric treatments that are more extreme for complex OCD cases. Talk about a stay in a psychiatric hospital if your OCD is at the point where you can't function in everyday life.

• 9

  Look into the extreme and controversial procedure of electroconvulsive therapy or ECT that sends a rush of electrical currents into the brain. While it's still legal and improved in practice, the risk of brain damage and other mental handicaps can sometimes occur with this procedure. Aetna says that while OCD patients have been treated with ECT, it hasn't been approved by the FDA and hasn't been empirically proven to be successful.

• 10

  Research the newer procedure of deep brain stimulation that uses electrical signals to stimulate the brain. First used in the U.S. in 1997, it's been mostly used to treat Parkinson's disease as well as cluster headache treatments. OCD patients with intense symptoms sometimes use this treatment or if all other treatments have failed.