Effectiveness of Systematic Desensitization and Cognitive Behavior Therapy on Reduction of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Symptoms: A Comparative Study

Abstract

In this paper, we focused on effectiveness of two treatment techniques-cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) and systematic desensitization imagination (SDI) on reducing Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Symptoms among OCD patients. A total of 38 participants was selected and then randomly assigned to two groups, where the first group received systematic desensitization imagination and the latter one cognitive behavior therapy. In the present study Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS; Goodman et al., 1989) was employed to assess the intensity of OCD symptoms during pre and post-test situations. To find out the effectiveness of treatment techniques, repeated measure analysis of variance was used to compare the mean scores of the subjects in pre-post treatment. On the whole, both the therapeutic techniques significantly reduced OCD symptoms. Further, results indicated that CBT was found to be more effective than systematic desensitization technique in reducing OCD symptoms for compulsion and total OCD symptoms. SD and CBT were found to be equally effective in reducing obsession symptoms.