Psychiatry scholars who helped create the gold-standard treatment for pediatric OCD are developing more innovative and accessible delivery methods.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] - One of the most common mental health conditions among American children is obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) - a reliance on ritual behaviors to counteract persistent distressing thoughts.
The gold-standard treatment for OCD is exposure therapy, which is the process of gradually and thoughtfully exposing someone to the object of their distress, with support. This active, collaborative and creative form of behavioral intervention requires trained practitioners to conduct multiple sessions with young patients and their families. Given a shortage of mental health professionals and rising rates of youth anxiety and depression, this means that the best therapy isn't always available to the people who need it.
A team of researchers affiliated with the Pediatric Anxiety Research Center at Bradley Hospital and Brown University's Warren Alpert Medical School is working to change that. They are focused on expanding access to evidence-based exposure therapy and developing new treatment and training methods with technologies including artificial intelligence, virtual reality and magnetic brain stimulation.
The center is distinguished by its iterative approach, said Jennifer Freeman, a professor of psychiatry and human behavior (research) at the Warren Alpert Medical School and director of Brown University Health's Pediatric Anxiety Research Center.
"Our science drives our clinical work, and vice versa," Freeman said. "The feedback we've received from patients and their families has inspired the launch of new research projects. Then that research spawns innovative clinical approaches that are integrated into the care we provide. It's an iterative and mission-driven system."
As a postdoctoral researcher at Brown in the early 2000s, Freeman was part of an effort involving researchers from Duke University Medical Center and the University of Pennsylvania that conducted the first large-scale randomized controlled trial for treatment of pediatric OCD. This trial ultimately established the effectiveness of exposure-based cognitive behavioral therapy.
In follow-up studies, the researchers learned that children with severe OCD need even more intensive exposure therapy, and that family reinforcement is critical. In 2013, Freeman's team launched a program to put those findings into practice.
