COVID-19 related differences in the uptake and effects of internet-based cognitive behavioural therapy for symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder

Michael Millard · Hila Haskelberg · Megan J. Hobbs · John Luu · Alison Mahoney

17 citations0/0 files storedBehavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Digital Mental Health Interventions COVID-19 and Mental Health Obsessive-Compulsive Spectrum Disorders

Abstract

BACKGROUND: The impacts of COVID-19 for people with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) may be considerable. Online cognitive behavioural therapy (iCBT) programmes provide scalable access to psychological interventions, although the effectiveness of iCBT for OCD during COVID-19 has not been evaluated. AIM: This study investigated the uptake and effectiveness of iCBT for OCD (both self- and clinician-guided courses) during the first 8 months of the pandemic in Australia (March to October 2020) and compared outcomes with the previous year. METHOD: 1,343 adults (824/1343 (61.4%) female, mean age 33.54 years, SD = 12.00) commenced iCBT for OCD (1061 during the pandemic and 282 in the year before) and completed measures of OCD (Dimensional Obsessive-Compulsive Scale) and depression (Patient Health Questionaire-9) symptom severity, psychological distress (Kessler-10), and disability (WHO Disability Assessment Schedule) pre- and post-treatment. RESULTS: During COVID-19, there was a 522% increase in monthly course registrations compared with the previous year, with peak uptake observed between April and June 2020 (a 1191% increase compared with April to June 2019). OCD and depression symptom severity were similar for the COVID and pre-COVID groups, although COVID-19 participants were more likely to enrol in self-guided courses (versus clinician-guided). In both pre- and during-COVID groups, the OCD iCBT course was associated with medium effect size reductions in OCD (g = 0.65-0.68) and depression symptom severity (g = 0.56-0.65), medium to large reductions in psychological distress (g = 0.77-0.83) and small reductions in disability (g = 0.35-.50). CONCLUSION: Results demonstrate the considerable uptake of online psychological services for those experiencing symptoms of OCD during COVID-19 and highlight the scalability of effective digital mental health services.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 17 citations exist upstream.

References

2013Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 2001The PHQ-9 2002Short screening scales to monitor population prevalences and trends in non-specific psychological distress 1991Clinical significance: A statistical approach to defining meaningful change in psychotherapy research.2020Multidisciplinary research priorities for the COVID-19 pandemic: a call for action for mental health science 2020Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on mental health in the general population: A systematic review 2008The epidemiology of obsessive-compulsive disorder in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication 2020Mental health before and during the COVID-19 pandemic: a longitudinal probability sample survey of the UK population

Cited by

2023Improving adherence to unguided Internet-based therapy for obsessive-compulsive disorder: A randomized controlled trial 2022Linking music streaming platform advertisements with a digital mental health assessment and interventions 2022Internet-delivered Cognitive Behavioral Interventions to Reduce Elevated Stress: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.