The Biological Approach to Treating OCD

Drug Therapy

As we saw in the biological explanation of OCD, the condition is associated with low levels of Serotonin, therefore the biological approach to treating OCD focuses on increasing the level of Serotonin in the brain.

Snap question - what is serotonin?



SSRI's

SSRI stands for selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor which is the standard prescribed medical treatment for OCD. SSRI's are a particular type of antidepressant drug and they are also used to treat other mental health conditions including depression.

SSRI's work by preventing the reuptake of serotonin after it is released across the synapse. This ensures that more serotonin is absorbed by the postsynaptic neuron and ensures that more serotonin remains in the body system. The increased serotonin goes on to improve mood and regulate the amount of required serotonin to help the patient deal with OCD.

There is a huge variety of SSRI drugs available and the impact on patients can vary, taking at least a month for the patient to feel any different and see symptoms lessen. A commonly prescribed SSRI in UK is called Citalopram. 

See the below videos for more information.



Controversially, on 20 July 2022 a paper was released that got a lot of media attention that suggested there was no link between serotonin and depression/anxiety, and it called into doubt the effectiveness of antidepressant medications. Follow the link below

https://news.sky.com/story/antidepressants-called-into-question-as-researchers-find-no-convincing-evidence-depression-is-caused-by-chemical-imbalance-12655342

Combining SSRI's with Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT)

Drugs are often used alongside CBT to treat OCD. The drugs reduce a person's emotional symptoms while CBT can help to bring about changes in thinking and behaviour.


Alternatives to SSRI's

When an SSRI is ineffective the dosage can be increased or it can be taken along with the medications. Sometimes other antidepressants are taken and we will now explore these.

  • Tricyclics - this drug work on other neurotransmitters as well as serotonin but it has more severe side effects so it given to patients who do not respond to initial SSRI medication
  • SNRI's - this is an additional type of medication available for patients who do not respond to SSRI's. This drug increases serotonin as well as a different neurotransmitter - noradrenaline.

Evaluation

- Strength - effectiveness. There is a lot of evidence to show the effectiveness of SSRI's in treating OCD. A study by  Soomro et al (2009) showed that SSRIs were highly effective. The study reviewed 17 studies that compared the effectiveness of SSRIs against placebos and showed that symptoms were reduced for 70% of patients. This shows a high level of success.

- Strength - Cost effective for NHS and not time consuming for patients, e.g. no need to attend therapy sessions.

- Limitation - Side effects including headache, blurred vision, nausea, loss of sex drive.

- Limitation - medications can often take a long time to take effect, e.g. 3-4 months, and even then they might not be effective. Patients may need to try a range of medications over a long period of time to find one that is effective.









Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cognitive Approach to Explaining Depression

Image
 The AQA Psychology spec for this segment requires you to be familiar with 2 theories; 1. Beck's negative triad 2. Ellis's ABC Model In order to make this an interesting task - it can be best to recap on behavioural, emotional and cognitive characteristics of depression that we learned about in the previous lesson.  We saw that depression can lead to aggression, changed eating behaviour, low mood and low self esteem, poor concentration and a tendency to dwell on the negative. For homework, you can take one of the two theories mentioned above, read about it in your book on page 150 and draw a diagram or colourful mind map to help you remember and imbed the theory. You can present it to the class and explain any creative additions you included and why they help you remember the theory.  Beck's negative triad Beck looked at people's cognitions (the way they think) to explain depression and he came up with some interesting theories. Faulty Information Processing - this is
Read more

Interviews - Topic 5 (part 3) - Theory and Methods

Structured (Formal) Interviews   Structured interviews (and interviews in general) are a widely used research method in gathering data in Sociology. They involve an interviewer asking a number of closed questions that can be pre-coded - this coming allows answers to be put into quantitative data and statistical form (suitable for Positivists - Can you name a Positivist Sociologist?). Advantages  - Structured interviews can be seen as more reliable as the study can be repeated using the same questions and this can allow for comparisons with other studies - pre-coded questions and answers can be turned into quantitative data (positivists) - they are a better way of getting questionnaires completed - postal questionnaires have a low response rate Disadvantages  - answers are limited ("yes, "no") as the interviewer imposes limits with closed questions  - they are more time consuming and costly than closed questionnaires - possibility of interviewer influence and interviewer
Read more

Coding, capacity and duration of memory - Memory

Image
Coding Information is stored in different forms - this is referred to as 'coding'. It is almost the minds method of applying labels to information and placing it in the correct cupboard. Research by Alan Baddeley found that short term memory is coded acoustically and long term memory is coded semantically.  Baddeley divided lists of words into four groups and asks participants to remember them. When trying to recall from short term memory participants did worst on acoustically similar words and when recalling from long term they did worst with the semantically similar words. See the video below for  a simple explanation. It seems counterintuitive to think that because participant did worse on acoustically similar words for short term memory that indicates that short term memory codes acoustically. For your exam please try to remember that short term memory is coded acoustically and long term memory codes semantically . That is a chunk of AO1 that you need to recall if asked in
Read more