ACT research (M. Twohig) is awarded a 2011 grant from the IOCDF

[Guest guest]

International OCD Foundation

2011 Grant Award Recipient

Combining Acceptance and Commitment Therapy with Exposure and

Response Prevention to Enhance Treatment Engagement

Twohig, PhD, Assistant Professor,

Utah State University

Award Amount: $50,344

The goal of this proposal is to increase the acceptability and client

engagement in Exposure with Response Prevention (ERP). Recent

research has shown that Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT),

without in-session exposure, is an effective treatment for OCD, and it has

high acceptability and low refusal and drop-out rates. Research has also

shown that procedures taken from ACT can increase engagement in

exposures for anxiety disorders. Still, the most logical way for ACT to be

implemented for OCD is within an exposure framework. Based on past

research, it appears that conducing ACT within an ERP framework should

result in high levels of treatment engagement and high acceptability. This

study will treat 60 adults with ACT using either traditional ERP or

ACT+ERP. Investigators will look at levels of treatment engagement (i.e.,

number of exposures, how well were exposures attempted, how much

response prevention occurred?), and acceptability. If treatment

engagement and acceptability can be increased, it is likely that greater

improvement could be seen in OCD reduction in a larger study. This is a

collaborative cross-site study with leading ACT (Dr. Twohig) and ERP (Dr.

Abramowitz) researchers.

http://ocfoundation.org/Research.aspx