What do you really need? Self- and partner-reported intervention preferences within cognitive behavioural therapy for reassurance seeking behaviour

摘要

Background: Reassurance seeking (RS) in obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) is commonly addressed in cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) using a technique called reducing accommodation. Reducing accommodation is a behaviourally based CBT intervention that may be effective; however, there is a lack of controlled research on its use and acceptability to clients/patients, and case studies suggest that it can be associated with negative emotional/behavioural consequences. Providing support to encourage coping with distress is a cognitively based CBT intervention that may be an effective alternative, but lacks evidence regarding its acceptability. Aims: This study aimed to determine whether support provision may be a more acceptable/endorsed CBT intervention for RS than a strict reducing accommodation approach. Method: Participants and familiar partners (N = 179) read vignette descriptions of accommodation reduction and support interventions, and responded to measures of perceived intervention acceptability/adhereability and endorsement, before completing a forced-choice preference task. Results: Overall, findings suggested that participants and partners gave significantly higher ratings for the support than the accommodation reduction intervention (partial eta(2) = .049 to .321). Participants and partners also both selected the support intervention more often than the traditional reducing accommodation intervention when given the choice. Conclusions: Support provision is perceived as an acceptable CBT intervention for RS by participants and their familiar partners. These results have implications for cognitive behavioural theory and practice related to RS.