Co-Occurring Disorders

Fall 2024 New Member Books Focus on Obsessions, Compulsions, and Intrusive Thoughts: Introducing Comorbid Eating Disorders and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, The Compulsive Reassurance Seeking Workbook, and Hello Baby, Goodbye Intrusive Thoughts

No parent wants to make things worse for their child, and certainly not when they’re already struggling with mental health symptoms, but explaining what is causing a child’s inner havoc and distress or outer symptoms can be a relief. It can separate the child from the symptoms.

To change societal perceptions towards OCD, we must first understand what those perceptions are. The purpose of this post is to share key takeaways regarding pre-service teachers’ (PSTs’) perceptions of and stigmas towards OCD, and how we can increase awareness within our schools and communities.

Whether we hear the term from a client, another provider, or our own classification of someone’s symptoms, “compulsions” tend carry with them some level of assumption – that this might just be OCD.

The headlines and the CDC report are indeed alarming, but they should serve as a wakeup call to all of us. Yes, we should think seriously about why we are seeing a steep decline in the mental health of teenage girls, but we have to come together now as parents, family, friends, educators, clinicians, providers, and as a society to support, enhance and establish more preventive measures for our youth.

Working with Black churches to create a better today and a much better tomorrow in the field (literally) of mental health care for African Americans are three Black leaders in mental health who will present at the 2023 ADAA Conference. ADAA is excited to have Bernadine Waller, PhD, Atasha Jordan, MBA, MD and Kimberly Arnold, MPH, PhD discuss their work, research and findings in a presentation titled Implementing Evidence-Based Mental Health Interventions in Black Churches.

Many mental health professionals are now conducting patient visits virtually. I am one of the only psychologists left in my building who has stayed behind to continue in-person work while abiding by COVID protocols. Since our practice specializes in refractory OCD spectrum disorders and anxiety disorders a lot of the work done at our outpatient clinic requires in-vivo exposures, which cannot be replicated on Zoom.