I’m really not feeling well at all because of my OCD. How do you know when you need intensive treatment? I guess I follow up with my doc and therapist.

Of course @pinkturtle55 What exactly do you want to know? I’ll give you a quick overview. On the first day you’ll be assigned a behavioral specialist and a therapist but you’ll do most of your work with your behavioral specialist. The first day you’ll also take a YBOCS assessment and go over it with your team so they have an idea of all your symptoms. From there they will create a list of possible exposures for you and you will rank what your anxiety would be for each on a scale of 1-7. They will then create a hierarchy based on what you’ve told them and they will have you start doing about 5 exposures per day. You’ll mostly work on exposures that cause you a 3-4 on your anxiety scale and eventually things that would have been a 5-7 on your anxiety scale will become easier. It’s a really great place and they know what they are doing so you’ll be in good hands. Let me know if you have any questions and if anything i said made any sense :)

Hang in there. You’re never alone. Iocdf.org and other OCD advocacy organizations exist. And this nOCD community, and everyone with OCD and anxiety, we’re basically all in the same boat!

Intensive treatment like in patient? Or intensive treatment like 1-2x per week? OCD impacted my life pretty daily in small doses. Not enough to stop me living my life but enough that it got in the way. I started out with 1x weekly treatment and after a year it has done wonders. If you feel like OCD impacts your life severely most days, I don’t think it’s a horrible idea to know your resources for intensive treatment. Wishing you all the best!

CBT has been amazing for me, I’ve been doing it for more than a year and have improved significantly. There’s nothing wrong with in patient if your OCD is affecting your life tremendously. I hear it can be very helpful. I hope your therapist calls you back soon, good luck during this time.

I did inpatient OCD treatment and it did wonders for me. Depending on how severely OCD impacts your every day life it may be a good option for you. When I went I was not functioning in every day life because my OCD was so severe. Many places have online screenings that will tell you how intensive of treatment you need. I know Rogers (one of the top treatment hospitals for OCD) for instance has an online screening.

There are different levels. I started with once a week, then twice a week to four times a week (all 45minutes). I was on meds then and the therapists had told me I need more intensive like residential level care. This is my second time being homebound so I agree with them. Talk to your therapist. Try starting out with once a week and gradually increase. Also some of the residential facilities will ask you if you’ve had weekly therapy sessions. You can call them though they give you free screening.

Rogers behavioral health does intensive treatment for ocd. It’s helpful because you can call and they give you a free assessment (super in depth— like 1-1.5 hours long) and then they’ll suggest what level if treatment is best. I only know for sure about Rogers, but I imagine other places do assessments or have someone you can talk to

@Hlr did you go to Rogers?

@pinkturtle55 I went to Rogers OCD residential and have also done two partial hospitalization at Rogers

@Hlr I’m starting partial hospitalization there in a few weeks. Is there any chance you’d be willing to tell me about it so I know what to expect? I would really appreciate it :)

@Hlr, obviously it will be different for everyone, but do you have any idea what sort of stuff is done for contamination ocd? Also are you just on your own doing exposures? And are there other things during the day? Like group therapy and such?

@pinkturtle Everyones exposures are really specific to their personal obsessions. I know for contamination OCD they’ll see what areas of your life are impacted and build exposure around that. If you are worried about door handles they’ll have you look at them and eventually touch them. Then maybe touch them and then touch your face. They might have you look at pictures of contaminated places or watch videos about contaminated places and eventually go to those places and contaminate yourself. My contamination was mostly home based so I brought items from home and had to look at them and then eventually touch them. I also find my brother to be contaminated so I had to do things with him. I also feel contaminated when I’m outside so I did stuff like look outside and eventually go outside then walked in the grass etc. Like I said, it’s really specific. Pretty much they’ll have you do stuff that’s hard but not so hard it will send you into panic. They believe in challenge by choice. They see a lot of people with contamination OCD so people with contamination have some of the highest success rates. At the Rogers I was at we all had a personal office like room to do exposures in. Your behavior specialist will help you with exposures as needed especially in the beginning. They had art therapy, thought challenging group, and process group during the day.

If you don’t mind me asking, did you start at residential then go to php, or the other way? I ask because I was initially recommended for residential but am starting in php. Sorry for all the questions and for kinda taking over this thread. It’s just I start soon (hopefully) and having a better idea if what to expect helps me

I did PHP two years ago without doing residential and then this summer I did residential and then PHP.

I tried going to rogers but instead of helping me they called child protective services on me and never called me back like they said i would for treatment i called back and left a voicemail tellling them they were fucked up