Obsessions and compulsions in children

Despite research having made huge progress in understanding obsessive-compulsive disorder and even though effective therapies are on offer today, when OCD manifests in childhood and adolescence we see a significant delay between its onset and the start of therapy. This is due to several reasons: the difficulty, for parents and teachers, in understanding the difference between what is normal and what is pathological in such a young age; the tendency, in childhood and adolescence, to hide symptoms due to embarrassment and shame; and the low level of self-awareness that children and youths have of their disease. Yet, we are dealing with a disorder which significantly compromises family, social and school life: this is why it is essential that it is identified as early as possible and properly treated.
To this end, this book aims to be a useful, valid tool for understanding and evaluating OCD. After an initial theoretical part, which illustrates the specific characteristics of the disorder (from definition to diagnosis and from aetiology to the main therapies available), a cognitive behavioural intervention programme, divided into 5 Steps, is presented, in order to gradually teach children and adolescents with OCD to:
• understand their disorder better and give it a name
• fight their obsessions using positive internal dialogue
• manage stressful emotions by learning to relax
• enact the technique of exposure and response prevention
• prevent relapses.
The aim is to provide psychotherapists, child and adolescent psychologists, and child and adolescent psychiatrists with tools and material to offer parents and teachers, as well as worksheets and therapeutic exercises to be used directly with their young patients. Moreover, family members and teachers can also use the book, in order to better understand what is happening to the child or youth and what strategies they can put into practice to restore a satisfactory quality of life and a carefree, satisfying social relational life.