Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) in children and teens: Evidence-informed treatment strategies for kids and their families

Participants in this training will learn practical, evidence-informed methods for using exposure and response prevention (EX/RP) with children and adolescents. The training is intended to focus on treatment and strategies in working with families presenting with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), so some familiarity or prior history of working with paediatric OCD is encouraged but not mandatory.

Participants will learn how to construct an effective hierarchy for different presentations of OCD, along with strategies that help children and their families work on these hierarchies when challenges are encountered along the way. Discussions will include examples of how families accommodate OCD, how to change and prevent the issue, and ways children can “break the rules of OCD” and learn simplified ways of “bossing back” their OCD in a developmentally sensitive manner. Time will also be devoted to discussion of what it is like to be a treatment provider for OCD and some of the challenges/mistakes we can make along the way when working with this disorder.

Participants are encouraged to bring challenging presentations to the workshop for discussion on how to implement these strategies towards their own cases.

Learning objectives:

• How to construct a hierarchy/stepladder for child/teen OCD
• CBT strategies to help make EX/RP more effective
• How to use EX/RP to treat multiple different presentations of OCD