Grant: Project Grant

Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) is a common and disabling disorder. Effective treatments include medication and cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), which are good but not fully effective. Thus, it is important to consider ways to improve treatment outcomes for people with OCD. One promising option is to help the family members of people with OCD reduce levels of family accommodation, a common but problematic behaviour. Family accommodation is when family members participate in OCD rituals, change their expectations of their loved one, or modify their own behaviours to make their loved one with OCD feel better. Family accommodation is unfortunately related to more severe OCD and worse outcomes in CBT for the person with OCD. To help with this problem, our team created a 6-session intervention that helps family members reduce accommodation in a gradual and manageable way. In pilot work, we offered this intervention to family members independent of CBT for the person with OCD. Family members found this intervention helpful and it resulted in large reductions in accommodation. The next step is to see if offering this intervention to family members before patients start CBT can improve CBT outcomes. The current study will offer 6 sessions of Family Accommodation Reduction or 6 sessions of OCD education for the family member (which will be our comparison condition) before the person with OCD receives 12 sessions of group CBT. We will compare CBT outcomes between people whose family member received the FAR intervention as compared to the psychoeducation and see if any benefits last at a 3 month follow up. We predict that patients whose family member receives FAR will do better in CBT than patients whose family receives education. We will measure OCD symptom severity, quality of life, and level of functioning for the person with OCD. The results of this study could provide a valuable and easily shared option to augment CBT outcomes for people with OCD.