Obsessive-compulsive disorders

People suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder find themselves in the overwhelming need of carrying out ritualized behaviours: sometimes these can be expressed as the simple need to repeatedly wash one's hand throughout the day or to check lights and gas for a certain number of times before going to bed; other times they carry out highly complex action patterns that structure themselves in the form of real ritualized behaviours.

This disorder may also be expressed through the structuring of obsessions: the person spends great amounts of time thinking or posing himself questions that may regard a whole array of diverse issues, leaving the person in a loop, in a vicious circle that connect questions to answers without giving a chance to escape.

Most often these rituals and obsessions are not spontaneously generated by the person, they tend to be the result of a dysfunctional attempt to control an overwhelming level of anxiety. The person tends to repeat them with such frequency that they end up being completely spontaneous actions or so entwined in the person's life to become something the person cannot do without.

This need of controlling certain highly anxious situations through compulsive behaviours and obsessive thinking is so well executed by the person that he is no longer able to avoid it.

Therefore, the real problem is not being able to interrupt such rituals which are needed to prevent the occurrence of feared situations or to cope with something that has already happened.

This highly intimidating disorder and its treatment has been researched for over fifteen years by the brief strategic approach, with the result of successfully treating thousands of patients with persistent and complicated obsessions and compulsive rituals.

In devising the best possible treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorders, we have produced many specific counter-rituals prescribed specifically to fit the different typologies of compulsive symptomatology, leading to a series of specific prescriptions that have proved to be effective with the different forms of obsessive-compulsive disorders.