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| Donat-o-Meter Stats |
| November´s Goal: |
$100.00 |
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Nov 30 |
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| Donations | | | 2much $10 Nov-10 |
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Gulp, Half a Million Dollars??
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Center for the Advancement of Health
However, group therapies had significantly lower dropout rates, but the same effectiveness as individual treatment. “Group therapy, with its characteristics such as … encouragement, reciprocal support, imitation and interpersonal learning [could] result in an increased motivation,” the authors write.
“This is a relatively weak finding, but still interesting,” Mathews said. “It suggests that group therapy, which is more cost-effective by far than individual therapy, may actually be the preferred form of therapy. If this is true, it would potentially help to make treatment more available to people with OCD, as it is less expensive, and requires fewer hours from trained personnel, so is easier to implement.”...
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April 17, 2007
Change your thinking, change your life
Learning to redirect thoughts can fight depression and other mental illnesses, cognitive behavioral therapists say...
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The UK is poised to be the first country to grant universal access to self-help computer software that has been proven effective in treating mild forms of depression and anxiety. The effort will begin in April 2007, UK’s Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt announced today.
delivers cognitive behavioral therapy via a computer software program. Providing this therapy as a first-line treatment for people with anxiety and depression heralds a significant shift toward providing new services closer to people at home and in the community. ...
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Extension educator teaches families how to deal with clutter
by Kim Colavito Markesich - January 22, 2007
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Even Forbes.com is talking about it
Paxil Treats 'Compulsive Hoarding'
11.10.06, 12:00 AM ET, Excerpts:
FRIDAY, Nov. 10 (HealthDay News) -- The antidepressant Paxil (paroxetine) is effective in treating people with a condition called compulsive hoarding syndrome, researchers report.
Compulsive hoarding, which may affect up to 2 million people in the United States, is often found in patients with other diseases, including dementia, Alzheimer's, schizophrenia and anorexia. It's most often seen in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Researchers aren't certain whether compulsive hoarding is a subtype of OCD or a separate disorder...(see "read more" above)
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SRIs Work for Compulsive Hoarders
By Vivian Richardson, Ivanhoe Health Correspondent/Reported November 6, 2006
ORLANDO, Fla. (Ivanhoe Newswire)
Excerpts:
At its mildest, compulsive hoarding can mean taking too long to complete tasks because things get lost in disorganized piles. At its most severe, most or all rooms of a person's home will be unusable because of clutter. Nothing is thrown away, "even though everybody else around the person can see this stuff is minimally valuable or not valuable at all," Dr. Saxena said.
Dr. Saxena and colleagues tested the effectiveness of paroxetine (Paxil) -- a serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SRI) -- for the treatment of OCD patients with compulsive hoarding syndrome. They discovered both the hoarding and non-hoarding patients with OCD had similar responses to the medication. The finding contradicts past studies which suggested the syndrome was difficult to treat.
Dr. Saxena says studies from other programs have shown people with compulsive hoarding have brain abnormalities. "Most people out in the lay public just think that these people are being lazy or they're being willfully stubborn, wanting to keep this stuff even though everyone is telling them to clean it up," he explained. "They really can't just go home and clean it up because the fears and anxieties are very powerful, very overwhelming, and that's going to require treatment."...
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Randy O. Frost
Internationally Recognized Expert on Hoarding
 Smith College-North Hampton, MA/N.E. Hoarding Consortium
Randy O. Frost, Ph.D. is the Harold Edward and Elsa Siipola Israel Professor of Psychology at Smith College. He is co-editor of the Obsessive Compulsive Foundation (OCF) website on hoarding. The leading authority on compulsive hoarding, he has been interviewed for The New York Times, Newsweek , and National Public Radio, and has appeared on ABC 20/20 Downtown, Good Morning America , and Dateline .
See Dr. Frost's website here.
Research Articles by Dr. Frost here.
Article "Learning to Let Go: here. Article "Clutter Gone Wild here.
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Sanjaya Saxena, M.D.
ACADEMIC TITLE:
Associate Professor in Residence, UCSD Department of Psychiatry
Director, UCSD Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders Program
Director, La Jolla VA Anxiety Disorders Clinic
E-MAIL ADDRESS: ssaxena@ucsd.edu
PHONE #: (858) 642-3472 FAX #: (858) 642-6442
More information on Dr. Saxena here.
Watch Dr. Saxena's Webcast on the Neurobiology of Compulsive Hoarders.
Research Focus (100 words): Dr. Saxena is the Director of the UCSD Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders Program. His research focuses on the neurobiology and treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and related disorders. He uses functional and structural brain imaging to understand the brain circuits that mediate OCD symptoms, to reveal how effective treatments work in the brain, and to predict response to different types of treatments. Recently, Dr. Saxena has been studying specific subtypes and variants of OCD, such as Compulsive Hoarding, to understand their neurobiology and develop better treatments for these disabling conditions. He has received research grants from the NIMH and the Obsessive-Compulsive Foundation. ...
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The UCSD Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders Clinic offers specialized assessment, diagnosis and treatment of patients with OCD, compulsive hoarding and other related disorders, such as trichotillomania (hair pulling), body dysmorphic disorder and Tourette Syndrome. Patients can phone the clinic at 858-534-6200 for an appointment.
La Jolla Village Professional Center, Suite B225
8950 Villa La Jolla Drive
La Jolla, CA 92037
Director: Sanjaya Saxena, M.D. (858) 642-3472
Associate Director: Brett Johnson, M.D.
For appointments, contact Mylene Eduvala: (858) 534-6200
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Public release date: 24-Oct-2006
Contact: Debra Kain
ddkain@ucsd.edu
619-543-6163University of California - San Diego
SRI medication effective in treating compulsive hoarding patients
In a paper published on-line in advance of publication in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, Sanjaya Saxena, M.D., Director of the Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders (OCD) Program at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine, reports the surprising finding that the serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SRI) medication, paroxetine, is effective in treating patients with compulsive hoarding syndrome.
The study of 79 patients diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) – 32 of them with compulsive hoarding syndrome – suggests that further controlled trials of SRI medications for compulsive hoarding are now warranted.
Compulsive hoarding, which may affect up to 2 million people in the United States, is found in people with many diseases, including anorexia, schizophrenia, Alzheimer's disease and dementia. It is most often found in patients with OCD, though researchers are not yet sure if it is a subtype of OCD or a separate disorder...
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Posted by Donna on Monday, October 23, 2006 @ 05:27:48 ICT (244 reads)
(comments? | Researchers | Score: 3) |
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Buried in Treasures
by Randy Frost, Gail Steketee, and David Tolin is available in January and can be pre-ordered
Chapters:
1 How to use this book
2 What is Compulsive Hoarding?
3 How Did This Happen?4 Meet the bad guys
5 Meet the Good Guys: Cognitive-Behavioral Strategies for Beating Hoarding
6 Enhancing Motivation
7 Sorting/Discarding: Getting ready8 Sorting/discarding: lets go!
9 Help with reducing acquiring
10 Here come the bad guys: Part 1. Motivation and Working Time
11 Here come the bad guys: Part 2. Taking On Your Brain
12 Maintaining your Gains
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What is CBT?
The BT in CBT stands for behavior therapy. Behavior therapy helps people learn to change their thoughts and feelings by first changing their behavior. Behavior therapy for OCD involves exposure and response prevention (E/RP).
Exposure For exposure to be of the most help, it needs to be combined with response or ritual prevention (RP). In RP, the person?s rituals or avoidance behaviors are blocked. For example, those with excessive worries about germs must not only stay in contact with "germy things," but must also refrain from ritualized washing.
Exposure is generally more helpful in decreasing anxiety and obsessions, while response prevention is more helpful in
decreasing compulsive behaviors. Despite years of struggling with OCD symptoms, many people have surprisingly little
difficulty tolerating E/RP once they get started.
Cognitive therapy (CT) is the other component in CBT. CT is often added to E/RP to help reduce the catastrophic thinking and exaggerated sense of responsibility often seen in those with OCD. For example, a teenager with OCD may believe that his failure to remind his mother to wear a seat belt will cause her to die that day in a car accident. CT can help him challenge the faulty assumptions in this obsession. Armed with this proof, he will be better able to engage in E/RP, for example, by not calling her at work to make sure she arrived safely.
Other techniques, such as thought stopping and distraction (suppressing or "switching off" OCD symptoms), satiation (prolonged listening to an obsession usually using a closed-loop audiotape), habit reversal (replacing an OCD ritual with a similar but non-OCD behavior), and contingency management (using rewards and costs as incentives for ritual prevention) may sometimes be helpful but are generally less effective than standard CBT.
People react differently to psychotherapy, just as they do to medicine. CBT is relatively free of side effects, but all patients will have some anxiety during treatment. CBT can be individual (you and your doctor), group (with other people), or family. A physician may provide both CBT and medication, or a psychologist or social worker may provide CBT, while a physician manages your medications. Regardless of their specialties, those treating you should be knowledgeable about the treatment of OCD and willing to cooperate in providing your care. Read more here: Source
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Saint Louis Behavioral Medicine >> Therapy Groups
Hoarding Group
A new group for compulsive hoarding and collecting is now available. The group is led by Dr. Alec Pollard. It meets every Tuesday evening from 7:15 to 8:30 at the 1129 Macklind Avenue location (directions). The group is only for individuals who are actively working on their problem. Group members must be referred by a healthcare professional and evaluated by the group leader before attending the group.
The group fee is $55.00 a session.
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Compulsive hoarding study could improve diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric disorders
| Medical Studies/Trials |
| Published: Wednesday, 2-Jun-2004 |
A PET imaging study conducted at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute indicates the neurobiology of America's estimated 1 million compulsive hoarders differs significantly from people with other obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) symptoms. The findings indicate that different medications could improve treatment success.
The study is the first to examine the neurobiology of people with compulsive hoarding and saving, one of several symptom clusters associated with OCD.
The study identified lower brain activity in the anterior cingulate gyrus of compulsive hoarders, compared with other OCD patients. This brain structure helps govern decision-making, focused attention, motivation and problem-solving, cognitive functions that are frequently impaired in compulsive hoarders. The study also found a correlation between severity of hoarding symptoms and lower brain activity in the anterior cingulate gyrus across all of the study subjects with OCD.
In addition, the hoarding group showed decreased brain activity in the posterior cingulate gyrus compared to healthy control subjects who had no OCD symptoms. The posterior cingulate gyrus is involved in spatial orientation and memory. The decreased activity in hoarders may explain why they have difficulty with excessive clutter and fear of losing belongings....
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A Prelude to Cognitive-Behavioral Techniques For the Treatment of OCD
By Steven Phillipson, Ph.D.
Cognitive Interventions for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
The "Thinking" behind treating OCD
Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is most often associated with the work of Albert Ellis and Aaron Beck dating back to the early 1970's. The basic premise of this therapy is based on the belief that at the heart of depression exist distorted and irrational thinking patterns. These patterns revolve around our automatic reactions toward life circumstances which create upsetting emotional consequences. CBT was developed to assist persons to respond rationally to automatic irrational thoughts. Here automatic thoughts are defined as mental reflexive reactions to upsetting events. Basically, the approach teaches persons to learn to identify our reflexive reactions or "beliefs" (automatic thought = B), that occur as a consequence to upsetting events (activating event = A). The prevailing sense in society is that it is the actual situations (A), that are responsible for the periodic upset (emotional consequence = C) we experience. Traditional cognitive-behaviorists focus on teaching clients to substitute rational thinking (disputation = D) for automatic irrational thoughts (B).
Go here to learn more.
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| OCD Related: Escitalopram Helps Prevents Relapses of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: Presented |
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Escitalopram Helps Prevents Relapses of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: Presented at ECNP
By Chris Berrie
PARIS, FRANCE -- September 18, 2006 -- Escitalopram, a highly selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), significantly prevents relapses compared with placebo in treatment-responsive patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), according to a 24-week, randomised, double-blind, relapse-prevention study.
The study was presented here on September 17th at the 19th Congress of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP)...
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| Support for Hoarders: Telephone-based care improves quality of life for those with anxiety disorders |
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PITTSBURGH, Dec. 5 – A better life for people with general anxiety and panic disorders may
only be a phone call away, according to a University of Pittsburgh study published in the December issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry.
The researchers report that telephone-based care for people with generalized anxiety disorder and panic disorder significantly improves both their symptoms of anxiety and depression and their mental health-related quality of life. The Pitt researchers also found the intervention results in fewer missed workdays and lower levels of emergency room usage.
This study is among the first to evaluate the efficacy of a telephone-based collaborative care intervention for anxiety disorders in a primary care setting, garnering results that could have far-reaching impact on how patients in all types of communities – urban, suburban and rural – can be helped. "Collaborative care" involves care managers who support patients by taking the time needed to familiarize the patients with their illnesses and treatment options while teaching self-management techniques and promoting adherence with recommended treatments according to evidence-based guidelines and under the direction of the patients' primary care physicians with specialist involvement when necessary. By providing support and monitoring progress, the use of care managers can result in much better outcomes for patients.
More than 30 million Americans have suffered from anxiety disorders at some point in their lives. Approximately 12 to 22 percent of patients present symptoms of anxiety-related distress to their primary care physicians. The direct and indirect costs of anxiety disorders have been estimated at $42 billion a year in the United States; 10 percent of those costs come from missed work days and other workplace costs. These facts establish the need for cost-effective and generalizable strategies for treating these patients.
"There has been a surge of interest in treating anxiety disorders and depression in the primary care setting, but we had few time-efficient and cost-effective ways to treat these disorders," said Bruce L. Rollman, M.D., M.P.H, associate professor of medicine and psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and lead author of the study. "We found that having non-mental health specialty care managers provide patients with information and support over the phone in collaboration with patients' primary care physicians was indeed a very effective way of improving patients' symptoms, quality of life and patterns of employment. Perhaps most importantly, this method can be used in a variety of settings and could prove extremely beneficial to underserved populations."...
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Senate approves long-stalled mental health coverage mandate
The Business Review (Albany) - September 15, 2006
by Joel Stashenko The Business Review
State senators Friday approved a bill 55-0 which they had long resisted to require health care policies in New York state to cover treatment for mental and emotional illnesses.
The state Senate's Republican majority dropped its opposition to the so-called mental health "parity" bill under an agreement reached in June, just before the Legislature concluded its regular 2006 session. The deal called for mandatory coverage for alcohol and drug treatment to be dropped from the legislation, and for the state to provide $50 million to $60 million to offset insurance cost increases for due to the parity bill for companies with 50 or fewer employees.
The bill's chief Senate sponsor, Thomas Libous (R-Binghamton), said the bill is "long overdue." He said he hoped it would help more people overcome the "horrible stigma of mental illness and give people hope." State Sen. John DeFrancisco (R-Syracuse) said he did not think there was anyone in the Senate chamber Friday who hasn't suffered from mental illness or have a loved one who has.
"It's a great day for those mental health advocates and those suffering from mental illnesses," DeFrancisco said...
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Proven to be effective for many anxiety disorders, Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a form of counseling that focuses on teaching clients to:
- gradually confront the things they fear in order to feel less afraid.
- learn healthier ways of coping with stressful situations.
- become aware of-- and then change-- the way they think in critical situations.
CBT is different from other kinds of psychotherapy or "talk therapy." Whereas some forms of therapy focus on helping the person to discover why they feel anxious, CBT emphasizes teaching the person how to feel less anxious. Whereas traditional psychotherapy often takes place over several years, CBT is designed to be a relatively brief treatment with distinct, tangible goals. The advantages of CBT are a lack of unwanted side effects and long-lasting beneficial effects that continue even after the person leaves treatment. The disadvantages are that the effects of CBT may take a longer period of time to develop—although sometimes effects can be seen after just a few visits, and that CBT involves more time and effort on the part of the person with the anxiety disorder.
For a more thorough description of CBT, click here.
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New Hoarding Therapy Group
Are you not able to part with anything, including the most useless junk, telling yourself, "I might need it someday?"
Does your home resemble a warehouse?
Have you pretty much given up hope in obtaining help for your problem?
Are you really motivated to do something about your hoarding?
A Hoarding Therapy Group provides both support and treatment. Individualized treatment plans are tailored to the needs and capabilities of each participant; de-hoarding assignments are manageable. Feelings relevant to the hoarding experience are explored. Guest speakers will be periodically scheduled. For further information, contact Stacie Lewis, LCSW, at (212) 568-9570 (Manhattan, NYC location).
http://www.ocfoundation.org/hoarding/ (Posted on OCFoundation website: August 26, 2006)
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Categorization in compulsive hoarding.
Boston University, USA; Department of Psychiatry, Rhode Island Hospital, 593 Eddy Street, Potter-3, Providence, Rhode Island 02903, USA.
Based on hypothesizing about the role of information processing, and in particular, underinclusive categorization in compulsive hoarding, this study examined categorization processes in people with clinically significant compulsive hoarding problems. Twenty-one participants with primary compulsive hoarding, 21 with OCD without hoarding, and 21 non-psychiatric controls completed three categorization tasks. Hoarding and OCD participants reported significantly more distress prior to each of the three tasks than did controls. On tasks sorting common household items, the groups did not differ on the number of piles created nor on the amount of time taken to sort. However, on a task sorting personally relevant items, hoarding participants took more time, created more piles, and reported more anxiety than non-psychiatric controls. Hoarders also took more time than the OCD group, and tended to create more piles. Hoarding severity was correlated with the number of piles created, but only when the objects were personally relevant. Results support under-inclusive categorizing for people with compulsive hoarding, but the effect was largely confined to objects of personal relevance.
PMID: 16530724 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=16530724&query_hl=1&itool=pubmed_docsum
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Posted by Donna on Sunday, September 03, 2006 @ 09:42:51 ICT (247 reads)
(comments? | Research News | Score: 0) |
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| Therapy/Treatment: PRE PUBLICATION OFFER ON NEW BOOKS ON HOARDING TREATMENT (Edit: offer now over) |
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This is NOT AN AD but information on a good deal on the new books coming out on hoading and treatment by Drs. Frost/Steketee:
Special Offer: All 3 for $55, plus free shipping.
Promo # 25428
COMPULSIVE HOARDING AND ACQUIRING, THERAPIST GUIDE
(ISBN # 0-19-530025-4) Promo #: 25427
COMPULSIVE HOARDING AND ACQUIRING WORKBOOK
(ISBN # 0-19-531055-1) Promo #: 25427
BURIED IN TREASURES
(ISBN # 0-19-530058-0) Promo #: 25427
CA, NC, WA residents please add sales tax.
Oxford University Press
www.oup.com/us
phone orders: (800) 451-7556...make sure you ask for free shipping as it IS available with this offer so have the phone agent check that!
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San Francisco Chronicle
COGNITIVE THERAPY
Don't Tell Me About Your Childhood
The Bay Area embraces a 'here and now' approach to psychotherapy with surprising results
Suzanne Leigh/Sunday, August 6, 2006
The Bay Area embraces a 'here and now' approach to psychotherapy with surprising results Suzanne Leigh Sunday, August 6, 2006 It used to be that seeing a psychotherapist involved delving deep into the past: Our narcissistic mothers and controlling fathers came under microscopic scrutiny as we grappled with gaining insight into our tarnished lives.
Under the therapist's prolonged probing we chewed over our "stuff" and "baggage" and family "dysfunction" and relationship "co-dependency." And the next week we came back for more. But that scenario has gradually shifted. Many psychiatrists and psychologists in the Bay Area no longer encourage patients to languish in the past. Instead they propel them into the here and now with a powerful tool: cognitive therapy... Read more here.
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