A variety of treatments for Obsessive-Compulsive (OC) behaviors through the years has resulted in a number of effective ways to treat those individuals affected by OC. Three treatments currently in use are the Danger Ideation Reduction Therapy (DIRT), the Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP)...

Anxiety disorders are mental health conditions, which adversely affect social life and the quality of life itself. Of all the types of psychiatric disorders, little attention has been given the fourth most common in the United States. This is obsessive-compulsive disorder or OCD, a treatable disease...

Eating Disorders Imagine a day in which your life was dictated by the food that you ate. Imagine standing on a scale while you ate or purging after eating large amounts of food. Those with eating disorders may engage in some of these activities. Eating disorders are serious conditions that affect mi...

Most people have a view of what they think mental illness is. Most of us have seen, at one time or another, someone walking on the street muttering to him or herself, perhaps gesturing, or picking through trash cans but pulling out peculiar things, or exhibiting other behaviors we think are "off"...

Anxiety It is the end of the quarter of your basketball game with 0 seconds left on the clock, your team is down by only one point, and you got fouled. It is up to you to make either the first free throw to tie it, and the second to win. The pressure is on, and a screaming crowd doesn't mak...

Cognitive Behavior Therapy and Eating Disorders Fairburn et al. argue that an extreme need to control eating is a central feature of Anorexia nervosa, and that in Western societies a tendency to judge self worth in terms of shape and weight is superimposed on this need for self control, ...

The Origins of Cognitive Behavior Therapy Cognitive behavior therapy was devised in the late 1950s and early 1960s by Albert Ellis, Ph.D. in New York and by Aaron Beck, M.D. in Philadelphia. Although they worked independently of each other, both Ellis and Beck had grown dissatisfied with the tradit...