Social Implications

Aside from the psychopathology of OCD a study searched to explore and understand psychosocial aspects of the disease and to provide positive accounts of the condition and its treatment. This study accounted groups of self-diagnosed OCD and using the interpreted phenomenological analysis or IPA. This test consist of data study that came from a series of nine semi structured interviews carried out with individuals whose OCD diagnosis is not been measured by its severity. The age of the patients also varied in range from 22 to 53 years. The IPA is based on three key philosophical tenets phenomenology (or first person perspective), ideography and hermeneutics (text interpretation) bringing about a test that tests how people make sense of their major life experiences.  In other words to study actually focuses on a more humane division it moves on empathetic accounts questions and analyzes people's life experiences. This entails researchers producing an interpretive critical framework initially guided by the accounts produced from participants. After researchers interviewed each person preliminary things were produced from each transcript, which showed a pattern of super ordinate and subordinate themes. This study showed a more social aspect of the disease, identifying the subordinate theme as "wanting to be normal and to fit in" a social context and the subordinate theme of wanting therapy in order to achieve a better self. Other super-ordinate themes where how this condition has adversely affected their education careers and family and personal relationships leaving them with an overwhelming sense of personal failure. to better understand a person with OCD one has to see this as a type of barrier that worked against their fulfillment in developing meaningful relationships. One also has to understand that these individuals make tensions about their life's progress and compare against age-appropriate lifecycle goals they want to achieve normalcy but the condition's presence leaves them with resulting feelings of disappointment. These researchers also had the chance to accounts how people with OCD treats their condition and dealt with others who did not understand the drive to maintain OCD behaviors. In the end several participants felt that being able to locate the psychological causes of OCD help they make sense of it as an anxiety disorder.

This study also focused on the un-medicated way to treat obsessive-compulsive disorder is a cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) which seeks to underlie dysfunctional beliefs and provides individual with an alternative explanation of anxiety origins pointing to the dysfunctional beliefs a person could have. In other words makes a person be more aware in order to challenge and replace cognitions in a systematic logical and empathetic way. It was concluded that 30% of the people who engage in CBT will not be helped by it because either they don’t engage in the therapy or they eventually drop out which does not improve their symptoms. A long term follow-up showed that CBT has a 55% success rate, showing that some treatment strategies are underdeveloped.