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Updated: May 2, 2026

Signal Attenuation as a Rat Model of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Published on: January 9, 2015
Dynamic patterns in psychotherapy--discontinuous changes and critical instabilities during the treatment of obsessive
Stephan Heinzel1, Igor Tominschek2, Gunter Schiepek3
1Humboldt-Universit㤴zu Berlin, Germany.
Abstract:
In therapy processes of a variety of disorders, discontinuous trajectories of symptom changes have been identified. In this study, we are reporting on such 'sudden gains' that occur in the treatment of clients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) following cognitive-behavioral group therapy. Time series analysis of data taken from 18 OCD clients revealed that a discontinuously shaped symptom reduction took place already before exposure/response prevention (ERP) in a large number of clients. Coincidently with the steepest gradient of symptom change an increased level of dynamic complexity in daily ratings of 47 items of a specific change questionnaire was observed. Our results support hypotheses from the theory of complex self-organizing systems, postulating nonstationarity and critical instabilities during order transitions. Our study underlines the usefulness of real-time monitoring procedures with high-frequency ratings (daily measurements) in therapeutic routine practice.
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