An Exploratory Study of a Novel Combined Therapeutic Modality for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

To explore whether a systematic combined therapeutic modality (CTM) could quickly and effectively improve the severity of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and the insight of OCD patients.

Included in this study were 100 patients with OCD according to the 5th Edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), for a 2-week short-term treatment. They were assigned to a drug-alone group (n = 57), and a CTM group (n = 43) using drug treatment in combination with cognitive behavioral treatment (CBT) and repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS). The therapeutic outcome was assessed by the Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS), Brown Assessment of Beliefs Scale (BABS), 24-item Hamilton Depression Scale (HAMD-24) and Hamilton Anxiety Scale (HAMA) before and after treatment. All data were treated with SPSS25.0 Software.

After the 2-week treatment, the success rate in the CTM group was significantly higher than that in the drug-alone group. Y-BOCS overall and factor scores were decreased as compared with those before treatment in both groups. HAMD, HAMA and BABS overall scores were all decreased after treatment in the CTM group. In addition, compared with the drug-alone group, the Y-BOCS overall score and factor score, HAMD overall score and HAMA overall score were all decreased significantly in CTM group, while the Y-BOCS score reduction rate was increased significantly. Insight was improved in eight cases (57.14%) in the CTM group containing 14 cases with poor insight. Multinomial logistic regression analysis showed that CTM was beneficial for the insight improvement of OCD patients (OR = 91.04-139.68); this improvement was more pronounced in patients with low baseline BABS overall scores (OR = 0.07).

CTM may be an effective short-term strategy to improve the severity of OCD and insight of OCD patients and, therefore, is worthy of clinical promotion and application.