Flexibly Dosed Intensive Exposure and Response Prevention as a Means to Maximize Outcomes for Youth With Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) is a highly debilitating psychiatric disorder that affects many youth. Despite strong empirical support that exposure and response prevention (ERP) is an efficacious and tolerable treatment of pediatric OCD including when presented in intensive formats, most individuals simply do not access or receive this treatment.

The dissemination of efficient interventions is of high public health priority, and graduated, or stepped care, models may be the answer. However, initial interventions within a graduated approach must be appropriate for the severity of the condition, given that unnecessary delays to an optimal dose may result in escalating burden on families and ultimately health services. Indeed, low intensity online CBT and self-help have so far had limited efficacy with less than one third of patients deemed responsive to treatment.

In contrast, brief intensive ERP is likely an efficient and effective alternative to flexibly dosing the level of intervention to the participant's needs. In fact, a recent pilot study (n = 10) providing two 3-hour ERP sessions to youth with OCD observed 60% post-treatment, and 70% 6-month follow-up, remission rates among participants. Extending on this study's findings, by utilizing more conservative remission criteria and providing access to additional doses of intensive ERP to youth not yet achieving remission, holds promise in identifying the level of services utilized by families to achieve meaningful treatment outcomes.

Above and beyond the use of a graduated dose model, many questions remain regarding optimal implementation methods for the behavioral treatment of pediatric OCD. In particular, the impact of treatment setting (i.e. community versus clinic) on response has not been systematically studied within this population. Given increased setting relevance and opportunity for in vivo learning, community exposures may be expected to be more effective; however, as they are associated with additional challenges (e.g., transportation time), their contribution to improvement needs to be directly verified and weighed against these costs.

Therefore, the present study seeks to determine the feasibility of implementing a sequential, multiple assignment, randomized trial (SMART) for the behavioral treatment of youth with OCD. The study focuses on evaluating the benefits from a minimum initial dose of intensive exposure and response prevention (ERP) as well as the demand for, and benefits from, additional ERP sessions by still-affected OCD families. In addition, via randomization, the study examines the influence of treatment setting (community vs hospital) on response. Primary outcomes include the impact of treatment on symptom severity and other relevant clinical outcomes (e.g., quality of life, youth- and family-functioning) as well as patient decisions/treatment utilization. Participant perspectives on study/treatment procedures (e.g., acceptability, optimal components) as well as cost-effectiveness (e.g., travel expenses, staff time, service utilization) will also be recorded.