Abbe M Garcia | PubMed Health

PubMed2005

Obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Compulsions are meant to relieve anxiety or to prevent a dreaded event. An adolescent or adult may recognize that the ritual is unreasonable or excessive, but that is not necessarily true for the young child. Children and adolescents will attempt to hide their rituals, although with more severe symptoms, this is not usually possible. To meet the diagnostic criteria for the disorder, the person must experience distress, spend more than 1 hour a day in either obsessions or compulsions, or experience significant interference in his/her life. This article reviews the phenomenology, causes, treatment, and outcome of children and adolescents with obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy↗

PubMed2003

Family-based treatment of early-onset obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Despite a meaningful common core of symptoms observed across the life span, there are particularly unique features of early-onset (prepubertal) obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) that make consideration of early presentation different from adolescent or adult onset and that may have important implications for treatment. This article will first review the unique features of early-onset OCD, focusing particular attention to the developmental and familial context of these children's symptoms. The literature on behavioral family interventions for other childhood disorders, specifically anxiety, as well as that on family processes (e.g., parent-child interactions) in families of children with OCD will be reviewed. The pediatric OCD cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) literature (CBT alone and CBT plus medication) will also be reviewed, focusing on current evidence-based treatment guidelines. Finally, a model of family-based treatment for young children with OCD and some preliminary pilot data will be presented.

Adolescent↗