This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.

Patients with OCD lack adaptive coping skills

Patients with obsessive compulsive disorder had more maladaptive coping skills and fewer adaptive coping skills than controls, according to research findings. In addition, insufficient adaptive coping skills in these patients were also strongly associated with resistance to symptoms and poor insight into the disorder.

“OCD seems to be characterized by dysfunctional emotion regulation and coping deficits,” Steffen Moritz, PhD, department of psychiatry and psychotherapy, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Germany, and colleagues wrote in Cognitive Therapy and Research. “However, a distinct profile of coping strategies in OCD patients (eg, the balance of adaptive to maladaptive coping, the relationship of these strategies to symptoms) has not yet been elucidated.”

Researchers examined coping and emotion regulation in patients with OCD to determine if the disorder is characterized by an excess of maladaptive coping skills and/or a lack of adaptive coping skills. They compared the behavior, compulsivity and ability to cope of 60 patients with OCD with 110 patients with depression and 1,050 nonclinical controls. Participants completed the Maladaptive and Adaptive Coping Styles Questionnaire, which measures coping styles across three dimensions: maladaptive coping (such as thought suppression, consideration); adaptive coping (problem-solving, acceptance); and avoidance.

Patients with OCD had fewer functional skills to help them cope and adapt than participants in the other groups, according to a related press release. Participants with OCD and depression displayed more maladaptive rather than adaptive coping skills and avoidance than healthy controls. Furthermore, participants with OCD had worse adaptive coping skills than both healthy controls and clinical controls with depression. Moritz and colleagues also found that patients with depression showed higher scores than those with OCD for seven out of eight measures of coping measured using the questionnaire, including acceptance, reevaluating problems as opportunities and keeping their cool. In addition, participants with OCD who lacked adaptive coping skills were more likely to have a resistance to symptoms and poor insight about their disorder.

“Coping skills are important for many aspects of daily life beyond mental health, and teaching children such skills ... may perhaps help individuals with OCD to better deal with emotional turmoil and challenging situations in general during adolescence and may also prevent the progression of a vulnerability to later OCD or depression as well as other disorders,” Moritz and colleagues wrote. “Although the study elucidated some coping skills that patients with OCD lack, it remains to be tested whether improving these skills may indeed lead to better outcomes.” – by Savannah Demko

Disclosures: The authors report no relevant financial disclosures.