Effectiveness of Religious-Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy on Religious Oriented Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and Its Co-Morbidity



Akuchekian S¹ ; Jamshidian Z¹ ; Maracy MR² ; Almasi A³ ; Jazi AHD⁴ Show Affiliations
Source: Journal of Isfahan Medical School Published:2011

Abstract

Background: Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) is a chronic disorder with significant influence on social, emotional, and occupational performances. Although epidemiologic investigations is proved on this disorder in different cultures but obsessive compulsive disorder with religious contents is more prevalent among religious populations such as Middle East Jews and Muslims. Many clinical researches showed therapeutic spiritual interventions could obviously decrease symptoms of patients with depression, anxiety, and obsessive disorder. The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of religious cognitive-behavioral therapy on obsessive compulsive disorder with religious content and its co-morbidities. Methods: In this randomized controlled clinical trial, our intervention consisted of 10 weekly spiritual cognitive-behavioral therapy 90-minutes sessions supervised by both a clergyman and a psychiatrist. Among outpatient obsessive compulsive disorder subjects visited in Noor psychiatric clinic, Isfahan, randomly 50 patients with 17 and more Yale Brown scores and religious content obsessive symptoms were selected and divided into two equal intervention and control groups. Yale Brown, SCL-90, and Hamilton depression questionnaires were used in this study. Data were analyzed by ANOVA/ANCOVA repeated measure tests using SPSS13 software. Finding: Mean age of patients was 32.9 ± 8.86 years. Ninety fore percent of patients (n = 47) were female and remaining were male. Yale Brown scores in three stages (before intervention, after fifth and tenth session) in both groups decreased, specially in intervention group, but showed no significant difference (P = 0.294). However, there were significant differences between mean scores of two groups (P = 0.047). Comparison of obsession subscale and compulsion subscale of Yale Brown scale showed decrease in three stages of the study. Decreasing trend in obsession subscale was not statistically significant (f(2,42) = 0.94; P = 0.398), but decreasing trend in compulsive subscale was (f(2, 43) = 36.008; P < 0.001). Conclusion: In non-responder religious obsessive disorder patients with religious contents, religious based interventions like religious cognitive-behavioral therapy could significantly increase clinical response. Such intervention could improve co-morbid symptoms as well as global severity index (who are worsened clinical response and prognosis of obsessive compulsive disorder) in addition to obsessive symptoms.