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Published on: March 14, 2025
Group cognitive behavioural therapy for obsessive-compulsive disorder: a systematic review and meta-analysis
1Department of Psychology, University of Aarhus, Aarhus, Denmark.
Objective:
Behaviour therapy with exposure and response prevention (ERP) or cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) including ERP are considered the psychological treatments of choice for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), but group CBT/ERP has received relatively little research attention in the treatment of OCD. The aim of this study was to provide a meta-analysis of the effectiveness of group CBT/ERP for OCD.
Method:
A systematic literature search was conducted and studies were meta-analysed by means of the Cochrane Review Manager Program with measures of i) pre- to post-effect sizes (ES) and ii) between-group ES in comparison with different control conditions. Outcome was primarily measured on the Y-BOCS and ES was calculated in the form of Cohens d.
Results:
Thirteen trials were included in the meta-analysis. The overall pre-post-ES of these trials of 1.18 and a between-group ES of 1.12 compared with waiting list control in three randomized controlled studies indicate that group CBT/ERP is an effective treatment for OCD. Group CBT achieved better results than pharmacological treatment in two studies. One study found no significant differences between individual and group CBT.
Conclusion:
Group CBT is an effective treatment for OCD, but more studies are needed to compare the effectiveness of group and individual treatment formats.
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