Insight, Research & Recovery

OCD and hangxiety: why the morning after drinking feels so heavy, seven reasons it hits harder, and what helps instead of checking and confessing.

OCD and sleep often make each other worse at night. Here are 7 real signs bedtime is fuelling your OCD, and how specialist treatment helps.

OCD vs panic attacks: they can look identical from the outside. Here are 6 real differences, why they get confused, and what actually helps.

OCD and depression often occur together and feed each other. Here are 7 real signs of both, why it happens, and how specialist treatment helps.

Single diagnoses of OCD are becoming rarer. Instead, we are seeing a high rate of complex diagnoses where clients present with OCD and co-occurring conditions. In some studies the rate is as high as 69% [1] suggesting that 69% of people with OCD have another mental health condition during their lifespan of OCD. One of the most common of these is Autism, otherwise known as ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder), particularly in the male OCD population (in the general population, males

It is no secret that medication for OCD is at best, imprecise, and at worst, arbitrary. This is due to the fact that there is, as yet, no medication designed specifically for OCD. I am not suggesting that current medication support for OCD is unhelpful but I am suggesting that it isn’t an accurate science. In my 18 years of assessing clients for psychotherapy, despite medication-specific research, no one medication has resulted in general positive results or feedback from tho

We've been lucky enough to be part of a growing community on social media who are highlighting the importance of safety and professional ethics culminating in a recent BBC article* and documentary. The importance of adhering to a professional code starts with adequate qualifications, training and credentials. This is a much wider issue but, following feedback from clients regarding a practice in Somerset, UK, we urge everyone to check the credentials of any practitioner or pr

If you are supporting someone with OCD, you will already know that your role involves a unique set of challenges. Challenges that are speci

Mornings can be bad if you have OCD. Have you woken to a feeling of dread and acute anxiety whilst being battered by intrusive thoughts? You aren’t the only one and you might be surprised to hear that there may be a biological reason for this! When we conducted an informal survey of our client population, there was an approximate 50/50 split between finding the mornings or the evenings more difficult. Suffice to say, it is likely that up to 50% of people with OCD have experie

It is sadly the case that the UK mental health sector is paradoxical. On the one hand, we’ve blazed a trail in evidence-based health & social care since 1999. The National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE)* is an international role model for the development of evidence-based clinical guidelines so that mental & physical health care is at the very least, empirically sound. Hurray! Clinical Excellence 1, Unprofessional Standards 0. On the other hand, these guidelines ha