Pharmacologic treatment of obsessive compulsive disorders

Abstract

Unlike the situation with affective disorders, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) patients tend to respond to medication with only a 30% to 60% symptom reduction, and patients tend to remain chronically symptomatic to some degree despite the best of pharmacologic interventions. Nonetheless, patients usually experience this degree of improvement as quite significant. It is of utmost importance to give OCD patients who have improved with drug treatments a trial of behavior therapy to maximise their potential for recovery. The number of controlled trials is growing rapidly as OCD clinics are seeing large numbers of patients. The typical randomized prospective placebo-controlled trial, which proved so useful in depression research, had, until recently, been almost impossible because of the small numbers of OCD patients available to any one researcher. As the pharmaceutical industry realizes the potential market for effective antiobsessional agents, they are investing millions of dollars in research into new compounds.