OCD In Children And Adolescents

The main causes of OCD in children are varied and include brain problems, psychological issues and even life stress. Finding out which is the main cause is of utter importance if one tries to treat OCD children.

Some doctors think that even issues such as deaths in the family or bullying can cause anxiety in children and then lead to obsessive compulsive disorder. To help prevent the disorder from advancing and to alleviate its symptoms it is best to identify the main factor fueling it early on and then try an OCD treatment for the child as soon as it is possible.

It is considered OCD children experience good results in relieving symptoms and anxiety by using a psychological treatment. Since most children and adolescents rely on adults for guidance it is of utmost importance that at least one of the family members a child looks up to gets involved in the treatment process both during therapy sessions and during home sessions. How might one adult get involved? For example, an adult can make behavioral observations and reports and provide positive reinforcements when the OCD child shows signes of improved behavior.

It is thought that therapy has shown great results in OCD children and OCD adolescents even though therapy sessions may have to be taken each week for two years at times. Not only does therapy help the child with his OCD problem but it also helps him in improving social skills and thus his own network of friends, in becoming less shy, less self-judgemental and much more.

The technique of “thought stopping” has been proven to bring considerable positive results with OCD adolescents. In such a technique one is asked to always shout in one’s mind or even out loud the word “STOP” whenever an obsession is taking over and one should do that right in the middle of the obsessive thought in order to interrupt it. Or, as an alternative to the “STOP” word which might take a life as an obsession all by itself, one might want to try counting backwards from ten loudly and then imagine a pleasant situation. In one patient the latter method is considered to be able to reduce obsessions by around 80% after one week and to eliminate them entirely after a month. One patient is hardly statistically significant but this shouldn’t discourage anyone in giving this harmless method a try.

This concludes our article on OCD in children and adolescents. If you want to add on top of what we wrote here or if you’d like to share your experience regarding obsessive compulsive disorder in children and adolescents then don’t hesitate to post a comment.

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