Effectiveness of Hypnotherapy with ERP on Clinical Symptoms and Positive and Negative Affect in Patients with Washing Compulsion

Obsessive-compulsive disorder is an extremely debilitating anxiety disorder, which is usually considered as a refractory illness that requires lifelong treatment. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of hypnotherapy with ERP on clinical symptoms and the fear of negative evaluation in patients with washing compulsion.

This is a quasi-experimental study with a pre-test and post-test design. A sample of 30 subjects was selected randomly. Before the final inclusion of subjects in the study, however, a screening test was administered to identify subjects who met the inclusion or exclusion criteria. Participants were randomly assigned to the control and experiment groups, each with n=15 subjects. After distributing pre-test questionnaires, hypnotherapy with ERP was started for the experiment group in 12 sessions of 90 min once a week. The research data was collected using Yale-Brown's obsessive-compulsive disorder scale and Positive and Negative Affect questionnaire and data analysis was performed by multivariate covariance analysis (MANCOVA) and SPSS 23 software

The results suggested that hypnotherapy with ERP had a positive effect on the clinical symptoms in obsessive-compulsive disorder (P <0.001), which remained stable during the three-month follow-up after the intervention. Also, data analysis indicated that hypnotherapy with ERP had a significant effect on promoting positive affect and lessening negative affect in patients with washing compulsion, and the results sustained in the three-month follow-up after the intervention.

Hypnotherapy combined with ERP can be useful for obsessive-compulsive disorder and enhance the effectiveness of ERP treatment. Hypnosis-based therapies often give increased power to cognitive-behavioral therapies. The suspension of critical thinking in hypnosis increases the suggestibility of the patient, making them more receptive of convincing dialogues in cognitive-behavioral therapy.