The role of reassurance seeking in obsessive compulsive disorder: the associations between reassurance seeking, dysfunctional beliefs, negative emotions, and obsessive- compulsive symptoms

Bikem Haciomeroglu

doi:10.1186/s12888-020-02766-y

Abstract

BackgroundThis study investigates the association of reassurance seeking with obsessive compulsive (OC) symptoms, dysfunctional beliefs, and negative emotions.MethodsReassurance Seeking Questionnaire, Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory, Obsessive Beliefs Questionnaire, Trait Anger Expression Inventory, and Guilt Inventory were applied to 53 obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) patients and 591 non-clinical participants.ResultsThe results showed that the severity of the OC symptoms significantly predicted the carefulness of OCD patients during reassurance seeking, indicating increased carefulness during reassurance seeking as the severity of OC symptoms increased. Moreover, feelings of guilt increased with increasing intensity of reassurance seeking. In addition, carefulness during reassurance seeking significantly predicted the level of anxiety. Responsibility/threat estimation, perfectionism/need for certainty, and importance/control of thoughts significantly predicted the OC symptoms. Moreover, the dysfunctional beliefs directly associated with an increased need to seek reassurance from different sources and seek reassurance more carefully. In terms of mediational effect, the results revealed that the individuals who had distorted beliefs were more likely to have OC symptoms and, in turn, the OC symptoms increased carefulness during reassurance seeking. The analysis of the model test revealed mostly similar results to those obtained for the clinical sample.ConclusionsThe findings revealed a close relationship between OC symptoms and reassurance-seeking behaviors.

Highlights

This study investigates the association of reassurance seeking with obsessive compulsive (OC) symptoms, dysfunctional beliefs, and negative emotions
Various empirical studies have previously verified the role of dysfunctional beliefs and negative emotions in Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD); the present study examines the specific role of reassurance-seeking behaviors in OCD
Associations between reassurance seeking and obsessivecompulsive symptoms First, regression analyses were conducted to examine whether Obsessive-compulsive inventory-revised form (OCI-R) total score significantly predicts the four scales of Reassurance seeking questionnaire (ReSQ); namely, Source, Trust, Intensity, and Carefulness

Summary

Introduction

This study investigates the association of reassurance seeking with obsessive compulsive (OC) symptoms, dysfunctional beliefs, and negative emotions. Reassurance seeking in Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) has been conceptualized as a form of neutralization behavior. Previous studies have shown the associations between the severity of obsessive-compulsive symptoms and reassurance-seeking behaviors. In terms of the associations between symptom subtype and reassurance seeking, many studies provided empirical evidence for the co-occurrence of compulsive checking and reassurance seeking [28, 32, 35, 36, 44, 45]. Kobori, Salkovskis, Read, Lounes, and Wong [16] acknowledged that reassurance seeking is common among individuals with checking compulsions, they emphasized the importance of studying the relationship between reassurance seeking and other types of OCD symptoms as well. The number of studies showing the associations between reassurance seeking and obsessions with cleaning, aggression, sexual, somatic, and religious contents is relatively low [1, 16, 53]

Results

Discussion

Conclusion