Cognitive behavioral therapy for a Japanese woman with olfactory reference disorder (ORD) comorbid with...

Olfactory reference disorder (ORD) is a mental illness in which individuals overestimate their sense of smell and worry about the negative impact of odors. Little is known about its successful treatment. A new cognitive behavioral model was developed based on cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for obsessive-compulsive disorder. Using this model, this study reports a successful treatment process of a 53-year-old female with ORD.

The patient's initial diagnosis was schizophrenia, and improvements were observed, such as the disappearance of persecutory delusions, through medication therapy. During this treatment process, it became clear that the patient's preoccupation with her own offensive body odor was not a hallucination or delusion caused by schizophrenia but rather a symptom of ORD. Within a limited 4-week hospitalization period, high-intensity CBT was provided by a clinical psychologist and a psychiatrist. Multiple CBT techniques were employed, including case formulation to identify her beliefs, reviewing safety-seeking behaviors, attention shift training, behavioral experiments, public opinion polls, mindfulness meditation, and exposure and response prevention.

Following a seven-sessions intensive intervention over 3 weeks, her symptoms of ORD, anxiety, and depression reduced. High-frequency CBT practices could be beneficial in treatment of patients with severe ORD, addressing severe ORD cases, facilitating rapid improvement in both ORD symptoms and functioning.